By

Jaye Michael

My story has no beginning.

My story has no end.

Make of it what you will.

To some I am a devil.

To others I am a friend.

Make of me what you will.

There’ve been those that hunted me.

There’ve been those who helped me.

But most don’t care at all.

One day I’m free and roamin’.

The next I’m back in jail.

Studied and swallowin’ gall.

My story has no beginning.

My story has no end.

Make of it what you will.

                                                                        — Meta Blues

                                                                            Eighteen

Chapter One:  Escape

          Despite the drenching rain, they kept coming.  The dogs had lost my scent more than an hour ago, but the trackers kept coming.  If I could make it another three blocks I would be at the mall.  Two blocks beyond that was the “Transportation Center” where there would be buses and trains.  The mall meant people and yet another chance to get lost.  The “Transportation Center” meant escape and freedom.

Rounding the corner, I saw it; brightly lit and beckoning.  The problem was the parking lot, a huge expanse of flat, open space with nowhere to hide until I reached the cars parked near the entrance.  Worse, it was well lit.  Crossing that open space I would be an open target.  There was only one choice—I ran.  I ran as fast as I could, always aware of the ever-approaching trackers.

Normally, I would have added muscle mass to my legs to increase my speed, but I had been running for five days now, with little food and less sleep. I was tired—very tired—so tired I would only have one chance to change.

The parking lot seemed to stretch on forever as I ran, the cars moving further away, not nearer.  Panting and feeling the pain in every muscle, I ran and ran. 

A shout!

A shot!

I heard the ping as it struck a car immediately in front of me and I immediately zagged to the left and then back.  Reaching the first cars, I bent forward hoping to be a harder target to hit.  It must have worked; the next shot was further away not closer.  In a rush I slammed into the entrance, hoping I could get the door open and make it inside before being hit.

For the first time since I escaped, luck was with me.  I felt as well as heard the next bullet.  It stuck the metal frame of the glass door and ricocheted into the glass creating a spider web of fracture lines very near where my head had just been, but I didn’t stop to admire it’s beauty. 

I bolted into the mall and stopped skidded to a stop.  Originally, I had stopped so I would not draw any more attention to me than necessary considering how wet and scraggily I appeared, but it became instantly clear that I could have been a unicorn and not drawn any attention.  The mall was empty.

“Damn!”  I usually don’t curse, but the mall was EMPTY, completely empty.  No shoppers.  Most of the stores’ lights were out, or at least dimmed significantly.  The only sound was the ubiquitous, and to my sensibilities horrid, instrumental music coming from the loudspeakers.  I must have lost track of time.  A closed mall would just be a large cage for me.  My trackers would find me for certain.

Wait!  Off to the left, almost at the far end of the mall’s wide central corridor were lights, bright lights.  Could it be?  Did it matter?  It was my only chance.  Too tired to run, I jogged down the hallway until I reached the store. 

Peeking around the corner into the store, I saw people and my hopes soared, only to be dashed yet again.  The gate was closed and there was no way anyone would raise it for the likes of me, or at least me as I now appeared.

Falling back against the glass behind me I slowly slid to the ground.  I wanted to cry, but even that release was stolen from me as I heard a distant clang.  The trackers were in the mall.

Scrambling to my feet, I ran blindly away from the thud of doom, and right into the gates blocking the entrance to the department store anchoring that end of the mall.  Trapped, I turned back to see my soon to be captors and was surprised to see that they had not yet made it into the main corridor.  The occasional kiosk and potted tree would do little to hide me once they did.  An escape was needed, and it was needed now.

On the same side as the store was a set of nondescript gray doors.  I ran to them, but rather than burst through them I opened them as quietly as I could, praying that they were not alarmed.  Amazingly, there was nothing.  Closing the door just as quietly as I opened it, I ran again.  Where the public area of the mall had been tiled and color coordinated, the back area was cement and unpainted plasterboard with a hip high stripe of wood, badly scraped up by years of less than careful box handling by the store associates.

As I passed each door, I stopped just long enough to try it, all but the passage door beside the loading docks.  That one was clearly alarmed, worse, there were cameras there.  I couldn’t even escape the mall now.  How fickle fate?  It kept teasing me with hope and then crushing me with reality.  Huddling behind an empty appliance box, I considered my options yet again.

Yet again, I seemed to have only one option and I took it.  Using the last of my reserves, I initiated a change, my last change.  Hair grew everywhere, my face stretched into a snout and my teeth became much sharper and longer.  Bones reshaped themselves.  It hurt!  The pain was unbelievable, excruciating, hellacious.  The doctors said it was due to the rapid loss of body mass as I changed.  And then, less than a minute later, it was done.

I lay panting, unable to move for several long moments.  This had better work.

Trotting down the back hallway toward the other side of the mall, I turned down the first connecting hall.  Reaching another set of gray doors, I put my paws to the crash bars and pushed the door open just enough to stick my head out.  Dropping back to all fours, I confirmed that my trackers were weren’t in sight and quickly loped back to the store where the people had been.  Then, I lay down with my head on my paws and waited.

Almost immediately, two pretty blondes approached the gate and opened it.  As they stepped into the mall, I got to my feet and slowly approached, wagging my tail and making a mix of whining and yipping sounds to let them know I was friendly.

The nearest blonde, maybe twenty-five and short, saw me and with a squeal of fear, ran behind the second one.  Great.  Afraid of dogs.  Damn fate.

The second one, however, laughed and turned to me.  Bending, she called to me and I quickly ran to her, nuzzling her and licking her, my tail wagging furiously.  I made sure not to jump on her.  After all, first appearances were critical and I needed her to like me. 

Just as she was about to get up, there was a loud slamming sound and three heavily armed men in black leaped into the mall from the side door I had just used.  Damn, these guys are good.

Seeing us, the guns were immediately aimed at us. 

“You there, drop to the floor.  Hands behind your heads.  Now!” the closest man called out as they ran up to us.  “Do it!  Now.”

As soon as they had dropped to the floor, the other two men quickly checked them for weapons.  I stood there growling and snapping at the man who was searching the woman who had liked me.

“Tell your dog to back off, lady.”

I growled and took a step toward the man.

“I said call off your dog, lady.”

I turned to look at her, hoping she’d play along.  If not, I was a goner.

“They’re okay.”  A fourth man came trotting up.  He had apparently stopped to check out the two women and was just now catching up.

“They’re from that store.  They’ve been doing inventory,” he said as he gasped for breath.  “They vouch for each other.”

“What about the dog?” the first man asked.  All the guns were now aimed at me.  This seemed like a really good time to curse, but I was too scared.  Besides, dog’s mouths are not designed for words, curses or otherwise.

“You leave my dog alone,” the friendly blonde screamed and struggled to reach me, putting her arms around me she glared up at the men and screamed, “Don’t you dare point those things at Bones.  You’re scaring her.”

“Is that really her dog?” the first man asked the second blonde.  Too scared to answer, she just nodded.

“Blast!  He must have snuck out by the loading dock somehow without setting off the alarms.  Let’s go.”  Without another word, all four jogged back to the service door and were gone.

After the service door had slammed shut, the two women slowly got to their feet and brushed themselves off.

“What was that about?” the second one asked.

“Darned if I know, but at least they didn’t rob, rape or kill us.”

“That’s comforting.  I think I’m gonna look for a new job though.  This place is getting too dangerous.  By the way, is that really your dog?”

“It is now,” the first blonde answered with a giggle.  “There’s no way I was going to let those men hurt her.  Besides, you saw the way she tried to protect us.  It’s only fair that we do the same for her.”

“I know.  You were amazing.  I was too scared to do anything.  Let’s get out of here before those men come back.”

“I’m with you.  I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Say, I was wondering.  Is she really a she?”

“Darned if I know.  It’s a good think they didn’t check.”

The cars I had ran past turned out to be theirs.  I didn’t look forward to finding out which one had the new bullet hole in it.

“Get in girl,” the blonde instructed after opening the door.

I didn’t wait for a second offer.  I was in and sitting quietly in the passenger seat in an instant.

“Well, she’s certainly ready.  Bye, Alice.”  My blonde hugged the second blonde and got into her car.  She started it, but waited until Alice’s car also started and then they both pulled away.

I really wanted to see where we were going, but I was exhausted.  Instead, I worked on our relationship by lying down on the seat with my head resting on her lap.  I was asleep in minutes.

“We’re here, Number Six.”

I jerked up and looked around.  It was just chance that she had used that name, wasn’t it?  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  We were back at the research facility from which I had just escaped.  So much for my dreams of a life of my own instead of as a guinea pig for a bunch of mad scientists; I walked sadly back to my room, tail between my legs.  Maybe one of the others had been more successful.  Maybe they escaped.  Maybe they could finally get the news out that we were being held here.  Maybe. 

In the meantime, I jumped up onto my bed and went to sleep rather than think about tomorrow’s torments.  The life of a metamorph stinks.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Two:  Onset

          When you’re a teenager, Saturday nights are either the most exciting time of your life or the least. For some, excitement means having a date.  For some, excitement means having something new and different to do.  Sometimes it’s the excitement of proving your adulthood by showing how brave and adventurous you can be.  If you’re not doing one of the above, Saturday evening is the most boring time in existence—except for school, of course.

          When there wasn’t a dance or some family event, the five of us would hang out together.  Usually, we were at Paul and Dan’s house.  They were fraternal twins and had three younger brothers and two younger sisters, so no one seemed to notice when there were three more in the house.  There was an old, abandoned house about two hundred feet behind the garage and through some dense brush and trees that the group of us had fixed up as a sort of clubhouse.  A very long extension cord gave us electricity for lighting and music.  A thirty year-old refrigerator provided cooling for our beverages and we all brought snacks and beverages from our homes.  All in all, it was a nice place to hang when we had nothing to do, which was often.

          Tonight was going to be special.  Frank’s dad worked for the local brewery one of the perks was a case of beer a day.  Unsurprisingly, Frank’s dad was not too good at keeping track of it.  Also unsurprisingly, it had taken nearly six months to embarrass Frank into stealing a couple of cases.

          “George, grab a brew for each of us,” Paul called to the last of our crew as the tall, thin, boy with red hair and acne entered the clubhouse. 

          Paul was always the most adventurous, the leader, even though Dan was the oldest, by seventeen minutes, he was the serious one.  Where Paul was probably going to grow up to be an undercover cop, Dan was going to sell us all insurance.  Where Paul was the good looking one, the one that had the girls giggling and pointing as he passed, Dan’s jaw was just a bit too big and his head just a bit too oval.  Frank, on the other hand, was the most non-descript of us all, with brown hair, brown eyes and a completely average body.  Frank already knew what he’d be doing when he grew up.  He’d be working at the brewery, just like his dad.  That left George and I.  We were the one’s that were going to go to college.  George was going to be a doctor.  He was the idealist who was going to cure all the illnesses in the world.  I had no idea what I wanted to do, but both of my parents had gone to college so it was assumed that I would too.  Not having a better idea, it was the course of least resistance.

          George threw each of us a beer while Paul turned up the radio.  A few seconds later, we were sniffing and swirling, watching the yellow liquid foam and slosh while we waited for Paul to take the first sip. He did, so we did.  Soon we were into our third beers each and feeling no pain.

          “Show,” Frank asked.  “Now what?”

          “Whatcha mean?” Paul asked.

          “I’m bored,” Frank explained.  “I don’ wanna just sit here an get drink like my Dad.  I wanna do shomething.”

          “Whatcha wanna do?” Dan asked sounding nervous even though the slurred words.  I wondered how he could do that.

          “I don’ know.  Whatda you wanna do?” George asked with a huge smile on his face to show how witty he had just been.

          “I’m hungry,” I threw in.  Of course, they ignored me.  I was the invisible one, the one that just followed, the one that no one really seemed to consider when there was a choice to be made.  It was frustrating.  I wanted to be the center of attention, just once, but at the same time it was really comforting to just tag along without having to think.

          “I wanna cruise the strip,” George said.  We weren’t the smallest community in the world, but we weren’t large enough for a mall.  Instead, we had a strip plaza, a series of connected stores, each with entrances open to the elements, and a large parking lot with a couple of fast food places along the main road.  As teenagers, we gathered there to prove we knew the score and could be as hip as everyone else.

          “The strip it is,” Paul decided and we were off, taking Frank’s mother’s car.  The car wasn’t sporty, like we would have preferred.  If anything it was boxy, an old woman’s car, which is what it was actually meant to be.  We still used it based on the principle of “beggars can’t be choosers.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          The strip was busy.  Just about every teenager in our town who had been unable to hook up for a date was out, trying to show how “cool” they were by hanging out there.  We usually eschewed it.  We weren’t that cool and we knew it, but the beer was talking and we needed to prove ourselves.

          Parking the car, we sauntered up to the entrance to Johnny Burger.  It was a chain restaurant, but unlike most of the others who wanted separate buildings on the edges of shopping plazas, Johnny Burger used mall and shopping center storefronts.  Still, it tried to distinguish itself from the others even more by offering bigger burgers and not just using beef.  All the girls in school would order the turkey burger lite^™, a smaller sized burger on a salad, while the guys went with the buffalo burger deluxe^™, two big buffalo meat burgers with fries and a pickle.  It was a tribute to the last meal that last year’s football team had just before winning the regional conference.  Thus, not eating it would be a slight to the school and could be hazardous to your health.  The other way that Johnny Burger tried to distinguish itself from its competitors was to have specialty nights.

          Johnny Burger was busy, so busy that the five of us were unlikely to get in.  Then, George pointed to the sign by the cash register.  Tonight was “Ladies’ Night.”  All the guys in town loved “Ladies’ Night” because anything they bought for their date was half price.  The girls loved it because they got moved to the head of the line for a seat and had the option to take their dates with them.

          “Crud!” I was looking forward to some fries.  Paul just walked back to the car and dropped into his seat at shotgun.  Without another word, we followed.

          “Now what?” Frank asked.  As the designated driver, he wanted to know where we were going rather than just ride around.  The rest of us would chip in when we had some money, but the reality was that he was going to be the one who had to replace the gasoline we used.

          “We could just hang out, but most of the football team is in Johnny Burger right now.  I don’t have any interest in dealing with those idiots once they’re done eating.  Hell, I’m gonna just go home and watch some TV,” Paul answered bitterly before adding in a somewhat more upbeat tone,  “Home, Frank.”

          “How about the rest of you guys?”

          "Home for me too,” Dan chimed in.

          “Yeah, me too, I guess.”  That was George.

          “I don’t hafta be home or anywhere,” was my answer, “and there’s no way I’m going home until I hafta.”

          “You want me to drop you somewhere?” Frank asked.

          “Nah.  I’ll just get out when you’re done dropping the guys off.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          Paul and Dan were long gone.  Sitting in George’s driveway after dropping him off, Frank stared into the night.  Neither one of us wanted to go home; George, not until later, me, not until I had too.  Finally, Frank sighed and tried again.  “You sure you don’t wanna do something?”

          “Nah.”

          “Hey, look.  I don’t wanna go home yet either.  There’s gotta be something we can do.”

          When I just sighed, he gave up.  “Fine.  Where should I drop you?”

          “Back at the strip, I guess.  I still want some fries.”

          “I wouldn’t mind a burger either,” Frank responded despondently, “but we aren’t going to get in to Johnny Burger tonight.  “Not with the jocks there.”

          “Well, I sort of have a way…”

          Frank was looking at me like I’d grown a second head.  It was clear he thought I was about to get myself killed.  It was also clear that I had said way too much, so I tried to backtrack.

          “Never mind,” I hurriedly said.  “It wouldn’t work for you…I mean, it wouldn’t work.”

          “What was the idea?”

          “No.  I shouldn’t have said anything.  It would never work.”

          “What?  What would never work?”

          “Forget it.”  I was getting worried here.  I couldn’t tell Frank.  At best he’d laugh at me.  At worst, I would be ostracized by my friends.  “Drop me off at home.”

          The entire trip home, Frank kept badgering me.  It was becoming clear that he was not going to give up and I couldn’t keep from vacillating between fear of discovery and excitement at being able to be special for a moment or two.  No one else I knew could do what I could and the last thing a teen wants to have happen is to be considered a freak and ostracized.  On the other hand, I was really tired of being ignored.  I might have handled punishment better.  At least then I’d know someone cared about me enough to at least correct me.  Oh, how I wanted to have someone, anyone, think of me as special.  The final straw was when he threatened to tell the others that I was hiding something.  Fearing the worst, I gave up.

          “Pull over to the side of the road,” I instructed him a block before my house.  Staring him in the eye and giving my best serious glare, I said, “I want you’re absolute promise that you will never, ever, tell anyone what I’m about to show you.  Promise on your mother’s grave, because she’ll be dead and so will you if you tell a soul.”

          Frank stared at me like I was crazy and maybe I was.  I took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet.  “Promise!  Now!”

          “I promise.  I promise already,” Frank said laughing nervously.  It was clear he was wondering what he was getting into.

          “No, mean it.  Promise me and mean it.”

          “I said ‘I promised.’  What more do you want?  Either trust me or don’t trust me, but I’ve given you my word.”

          “Okay, I guess.  Head for the clubhouse.”  He’d know where I meant.  Like I’d noted earlier, we’d been using that same old house to hide out and do all the things we knew would get our parents upset for years.

          “What’s there?”

          “You’ll see.   Just drive.”  Still nervous about what I was about to do, I refused to say anything else, staring straight ahead until we got to the end of the road leading to the shack.  Whoever had lived there before must have had some kind of serious problem because they had left most of the furniture, now aging but usable, tools and personal items.  Each of us had claimed a different bedroom, put a lock on it and used it as a staging area for whatever we wanted.  I had cleaned mine out and set it up as a bedroom for those days when my parents were battling it out with each other and I needed to hide.  I had a bed with sheets and blankets and a wardrobe with some changes of clothes.  I had even set up a thunder jug and a washbasin that I kept filled so I could clean up using water from the pump in the kitchen.

          I’ve got to give Frank credit.  He kept at me the entire trip, only stopping when I went into my room and closed the door behind me, telling him to wait in the living room.

          Ten minutes later, Josh was jolted away from his handheld video game—I don’t remember which system he was using—as I strode down the stairs.  Before I could say anything, he jumped up and tried to run out of the house.

          “Frank.  Wait.  It’s me.  Stop running.” I called, but he really didn’t listen.  I guess I should have realized what would happen.  With a sigh, I took off after him.  My longer legs helped and I caught him just as he was trying to unlock the driver’s-side car door.

          Panting, I tried to explain.  “Frank.  It’s me.  Stop trying to run away, damn it.  I changed.  It’s a trick I just learned.  I’ll bet you can do it too if you try.”

          Frank just looked scared, eyes darting as he squirmed, trying to slip out of the hold I had on his jacket as his eyes darted wildly about as he tried to escape from the stranger pinning him to his car in the dark, in the woods.  “Don’t hurt me, Mister.  I wasn’t hurting anything.  Lemme go.”

          Frank was beside himself in his panic.  I had to do something fast or he was going to piss in his pants.  Still holding him, I concentrated and morphed back into myself.  Frank’s eyes grew wider than I would have thought eyes could get.  He didn’t wet his pants.  Instead, he fainted.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Three:  Rape

          “Eat well, ‘Morfer.’  You’re gonna need the energy tonight.”  It always amazed him that the guard could whisper and still make it sound like a snarl, but given that none of the other metamorphs were allowed to talk during dinner it was certainly easy to hear.  In fact, a couple of the other metamorphs sitting nearby heard and blanched at his words.  It was going to be an ugly night in hell.

          The dining area was a barren room with steel and cement reinforced cinderblock walls and two institutional steel pipe and lumber picnic benches for us “morphers,” as the guards depreciatingly called us.  There was a third table at one the end of the room, by one of the two solid steel doors.  That was the table were we would find the labeled Styrofoam trays with our meals on them and that was where we placed the leftovers when we were done eating.  A guard made us show that we had returned even the plastic silverware when we drop off our garbage.  I was number six, or at least that was the label on my food, my bedroom, my clothes, and everything else that I could possibly call my own.

          At the end of the meal a guard ordered us to line up along the wall—always the same wall—and we filed slowly out of the dining room and into our living areas through the only other door in the room.  The others who had heard the guard’s threat made brief, surreptitious hand contacts when the guards were not looking in order to offer their sympathy and support.  We had all been terrorized like this; tonight it was just my turn.

          The dining room was off a common area about four times the size of the dining room.  After the last escape, we were not allowed to speak to each other for a month—only to the guards, and we had remarkably little to say to those swine.  The result was several folks sitting around the television watching some boring game show, two metamorphs playing chess and two more playing ping-pong.  The sounds of the bouncing ping-pong ball were the loudest noise in the room, adding to the bizarreness of our situation.  I would have gone to my room and read—at least I could have enjoyed that—but I was in no rush to have that guard come visiting.  And visiting he would come.

          After the game show there was some reality show with a bunch of people making fools of themselves, then a cops and robbers show.  I found myself nodding off through both shows and actually jerked when one of the guards called out, “Thirty minutes to lights out.  Everyone back to your rooms.”

          I took my time preparing for bed, moving like the condemned man I was, so long that the lights went out before I was completely finished.  I morphed my eyes into a cat’s so I could see from the light dimly shining through the sealed, bulletproof, blast proof stationary window in by bedroom.  Finally done, I dragged myself off to bed.  Others had tried surprising their rapists, but the guards expected that of us and made it even worse if we tried anything.  I just wanted it over with so I could lick my wounds and get to bed.

          “Aw, how sweet.  You waited up for me,” a voice said through the intercom beside the door.  My rapist was here.  He was about six foot tall and middle aged with muscle turning to fat around the waist.  The bulbous nose and balding head did nothing to improve his appearance as he stood by the clear plastic door watching me like the predator he was examining his prey.  I closed my book, set it on the nightstand and morphed my eyes back to normal before he was close enough to see them.  Whenever we morped without permission the guards got nasty.

          Unlocking the door, he strolled into the room.  He was too relaxed; the other guards must be in on it.  That means the videotape would magically loop to a time when I was asleep or be switched for another night’s tape.  Worse, it probably meant the other guards would be watching and pleasuring themselves as he had his fun with me.

          “Tonight you’re mine, ‘morpher,’” he said with a smile, but his eyes were cold, so cold I shivered.  Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a piece of glossy paper that must have come from some skin magazine and tossed it on the bed.  Then he strolled over to the desk chair, flipped it around so he could watch me and got comfortable.

          When I unfolded the paper, I was surprised to see that the woman whose image was circled in red magic marker was dressed.  I guessed she was some up and coming starlet, but I didn’t’ recognize her.  Maybe I should have, but none of us “morphers” got out to see first run movies very often. 

          “She has clothes on,” I noted with a quavering voice.  We were still required to be silent.  We had another week to go on that particular punishment, but we can’t do clothes and I was more worried about failing to provide him with his rape fantasy than breaking the silence rule.

          He just smiled, stood and started taking off his jacket.  With a sigh, I morphed into my best guess as to what she looked like:  blonde hair that cascaded over her shoulders and part way down her back, high cheekbones and a creamy girl-next-door face, and perky breasts that were clearly larger than a handful, but not so large as to be obscene.

          When I looked up, he was taking his shirt off.  Each button was like the tick of the world’s loudest clock as it moved closer and closer to game time.  After the shirt came off, he stood there in his undershirt, pants and shoes.  It was hard to see clearly with my normal eyes, but it looked like there was some kind of bulge around his waist above and beyond that which could be explained by middle-aged spread.  Great!  Sex toys.  This was truly turning into an extra special night, even for hell.

          Pulling off his undershirt, he undid some tape and something dark sagged.  I might have wished it were his insides coming out, but it looked like some kind of fabric.  The guard carefully unwound it and tossed it on the bed.  It was a dress.  In fact, it looked very similar to the dress on the woman in the picture.

          “Don’t just lay there, ‘morpher.’  Put it on.”

          I pulled it under the covers and slipped it on, making a few minor adjustments to make it fit better.  Even a victim wants to look good.  Then, I slide out from under the covers and stood before him, head hanging and eyes staring a hole in the tile floor.

          “Come here.”  When I didn’t move quickly enough he snarled, “I said come here.”  Then, he grabbed my arm and yanked me toward him.  I ended up pressed tight against him.  He was stillholding my arm and his other hand snaked around my waist to hold me there.  Then, he leaned down and kissed me, hard.

          I expected him to “cop a feel,” but he surprised me and released my waist.  As I stepped back he yanked my arm, twirling me as if we were dancing.  When I stumbled, he laughed, releasing my hand and letting me fall to the floor.

          The laughter stopped and he snarled at me to get up and follow him as he turned and opened the door.  He didn’t even look back to see what I was doing until the door was open and he was holding it for me.  The gallantry of the act didn’t fit and I was confused, but still I hurried to comply.  As always, compliance was the only real choice under the circumstances.

          When I made it through the door into the common area, there were three other guards and all three of them had a pretty young thing next to them.  It looked like I wasn’t the only morpher about to be raped.

          We all traipsed into the dining room.  Balloons, streamers, and a sign reading “Happy Birthday Ralph” covered the walls.  The picnic tables were covered with paper table clothes and on the serving table was a cake and several bottles of booze.  The picnic tables were pushed to one side leaving a small open area on the side of the room where we would line up.

          My guard walked over to the serving table and reached underneath to pull out a battery operated radio and some heels.  The heels were tossed to each of us and we adjusted our foot sizes to fit.  Then, turning back to the group of us he pointed to the sign and said, “Listen up, ‘morphers.’  It’s Ralph’s fortieth birthday and that’s Ralph.”  He pointed to a lean but muscular man who was about my height with wiry black hair, lightly peppered with gray.

          “You need to make Ralph the happiest man there ever was.  Make him happy and we drop the silence rule.  Don’t make him happy and you’ll see just how nasty we can be.  Do I make myself clear?”

          It was hesitant, but all of us nodded.  The other two guards moved over to join my guard by the serving table.  The radio began to blare out some dance music and Ralph smiled like a Cheshire cat.  “Let’s dance, ladies.”

          “And remember ‘ladies,’ make it good—very good,” my guard interjected.  We made it good.  Rubbing up against someone was better than forced sex.  It was an easy choice.

          About an hour and a half and half a dozen drinks later we were all pretty high, all except my guard.  He had been nursing his same drink the entire time and watching us all like a hawk.  So far, Ralph had only copped a few feels and so had the other two guards.  At one point he offered us to my guard, but the offer was refused.

          After the next song, my guard turned it off and called for everyone’s attention.  “An now, for the big finale.  Girls,” the sarcasm oozed like puss from his mouth, “take Ralph here to the common area and screw him to within an inch of his life.  And remember, make him the happiest man in the world or else.”

          With that the second guard opened the door to the common area and pushed Ralph into the next room.  A snarl from my guard and we joined him there.  Surprisingly, none of the other guards joined us.  Maybe they didn’t enjoy watching.  I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy doing.  Luckily, it wasn’t necessary.  Two of my fellow morphers took the lead.  Maybe they felt it was acceptable.  Maybe they were better actors.  Either way, they made Ralph very happy and I was profusely grateful.  They made Ralph so happy we all needed to help him back into the dining room.

          Surprisingly, when we got back to the dining area, the other guards were out cold on the picnic tables and my guard was sitting on the floor with his feet splayed out in front of him and a bottle in his hand.  His head was bowed forward and he barely moved when we came in.  They must have had a drinking contest while we were gone.

          I immediately turned to knock out Ralph, but one of the other morphers beat me to it.  He was dead, his throat cut.  I guess the decision to pleasure Ralph hadn‘t been quiet as altruistic as I might have originally thought.  Instead, I bolted over to my guard and patted him down.  The keys were in his back pants pocket and I almost missed them, expecting them to be better hidden.  Maybe he had read the “Purloined Letter.”

          Without another thought, we were at the door.  My hand trembled as I struggled to insert the right key into the lock.  As soon as it had clicked open we were all bolting though and getting our fellow morphers.  Less than five minutes later, several apparent guards escorted several ladies and a couple of morphers out of the unit.  We weren’t free yet, but we were moving as quickly as we could toward that goal again.  Some days, good things can come from bad.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Four:  Ostracized

          “What the hell happened between you and Frank?” George hissed angrily at me as he dropped down on the other side of the lunchroom table at which I was seated.

          “What are you doing here?” I asked in annoyance.  For the past week none of my ex-friends would talk to me or look at me, although they had been pretty freely talking about me—and in the least flattering terms possible.  Some of my most enjoyable thoughts of late involved various highly embarrassing and even more highly improbable revenge fantasies.

          “Screw them,” George whispered.  “We used to be friends, you and I.  I don’t believe the crap they’re spreading and I just want to know what really happened.”

          “Nothing.  Just go back to your friends.”  I sighed as I tried to return to my peanut butter and salami sandwich, but George grabbed my hand.

          “Cut the crap and just tell me what happened already.”

          “Move it or loose it.”  I was putting up with the war of words because I knew I couldn’t win, but overt aggression was another thing.  When George didn’t move his hand, I continued in my most menacing voice, “I’m not going to say it again.”

          George held on a moment longer, but then grudgingly removed his hand.  Angry himself now, he responded, “And I’m not going to ask again.  Tell me what really happened or lose yet another friend.  Can you really afford that?”

          “No,” I sighed a last.  I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.  I was going to regret this, but George had been right.  I’d lost my parents years ago, if I ever had them, and now I was running out of friends.  It was a painful lesson in how good it was to have them.  “Meet me at the club tonight after dark.”

          George nodded and left, just it time as it turned out.  A moment later there was white fluid running down my chest and onto my pants. 

          I could have turned around and punched out the guy who had done it.  I nearly did—certainly the temptation was there—but I knew to whom the milk belonged from the voice behind me that said, “Serves you right, freak.”  It was Paul and he had just crossed the line, moving beyond words.  Only the chance that I might, just might, be able to keep at least one friend held me back.  Besides, I’d get even with them later—I’d already promised myself.

          The remainder of the day was no better.  I managed to miss getting beaten up by the jocks, but the computer club kicked me out and the chess club pretended I was invisible.  Ah, high school, the best years of our lives.

          I went directly to my room at the club and locked myself in.  The last thing I needed was to have my parents haranguing me about all my bruises and ruined clothes.  I assumed, apparently correctly, that my parents were too busy either working, watching television or fighting that they would just assume I was with “the guys” rather than check on me.  I spent the afternoon curled up inside my sleeping bag atop the airbag on the creaky old iron bed frame. I had bought the sleeping bag with my own money, specifically for my room at the club.  I won’t deny the possibility of a few tears, but my eyes were closed so I’m not confirming it either.

          About an hour before nightfall, I dragged myself out of bed, ate a couple of candy bars for dinner and tried to figure out what I was going to do when George got here, assuming he hadn’t changed his mind about coming—or set me up and told the others when and where we were to meet.  I had finished my preparations for his visit about fifteen minutes before George was scheduled to arrive and went back to bed, this time above the covers and staring at a magazine containing an image of a model, laughing and surrounded by friends as she daintily sipped some alcoholic beverage.

          I jerked at the knock on my bedroom door.  I must have been concentrating too hard as I had not heard anyone approaching.

          “You in there?” George called out, knocking again.

          “Yeah.  You alone?”  I didn’t really care, but it would be easier if I knew if he had betrayed me earlier rather than later.

          “Of course I’m alone,” he blustered.  “I keep my promises and you know it.  Now you do the same.”

          “Okay.”  I opened the door a crack; ready to slam it shut if anyone else was there.  It wouldn’t stop someone for long, but it would give me time to grab the baseball bat beside the door.  My first glance suggested that he really was alone so I opened the door some more and checked the hallway.  Seeing the he really was alone, I gestured to the now open door, inviting him in.

          Downstairs in the living room by the front entrance, I stopped and opened the closet by the entry hall.  “See that closet?”

          When he nodded I continued.  “Check it out.  Make absolutely certain I cannot get out and that no one else could get in.”

          George sort of glanced at the closet, but that’s all.  “It’s a closet.  So what?”

          “No.  I’m serious.  Check it out thoroughly.  I won’t show you what I showed George until you’re positive I can’t get out of that closet.”  Then, I just crossed my arms and stood there mutely waiting. 

          Finally, George just shrugged and checked the closet, banging on the walls, ceiling and floor.  Exiting the closet grumbling, he said, “Okay Houdini.  I don’t see a way out.  What the hell are you trying to prove here?

          “You asked what happened.  I’m trying to show you, but I’ve got to do it in a way that you will believe is real, not another trick like Frank is claiming.”

          “Enough already.  Just show me or I’m leaving,” George snapped.  “Besides, Frank’s latest claim is that you’re gay.”  What does all this ‘magic crap’ have to do with anything like that?”

          “Nothing—and everything.  It has nothing to do with whether I’m gay or not because I’m not, but what I’m really going to show you has everything to do with magic.  Now finish making sure I can’t go anywhere from in there, then close the door and open it again after two minutes.  Okay?”

          “Okay, I guess.”  He made one last check of the tiny, windowless room, shrugged and closed the door behind him.  When he opened it two minutes later there was a beautiful model wearing the same clothes I had enter the closet wearing.  They didn’t really look that good on her, but there was no question that she was female.

          “Hey!  Who are you and how did you get in here?” George exclaimed.  Then, looking beyond the old man he asked, “What did you do to my friend?”

          “Nothing,” the young woman responded, slowly sliding around George to position herself by the front door and lean back against it.

          “Hey, Lady, what the hell do you think you’re doing?  Get the hell away from that door.”

          “In a moment, George, in a moment.  First, I need you to hear something.”

          “I don’t gotta listen to nothing from you, Lady.  Now let me out.”  George was practically screaming as he waffled between fear and anger.

          “Where do you think your friend went, George?  You searched the room.  You know there is no place he could have gone.”

          “I don’t know and I don’t give a damn.  Now LET ME OUT!”

          “Fine,” the woman sighed and her shoulders slumped.  “Let me change back and I’ll let you out.”

          “Huh?  What the hell are you talking about?”  The others had always teased George about being a bit slow.  In class, he was always the last in the group to get a new idea, but once he got it he really got it.  George had stopped talking when he finally realized that something was happening to the woman.  From his perspective he was watching as her hair grew backward into her skull and darkened.  She seemed to be shrinking in on herself.  All interest in leaving gone, all thoughts of fear for his own safety from the strange woman forgotten, George watched slack-jawed as the she turned into his friend.

          When it was done, I sagged down onto the floor in exhaustion.  The changes took a lot out of me.  After these two, I had maybe one more left in me for the next day or two.

          Closing his mouth just before I opened mine to tease him about gathering flies, George stumbled back to a rickety wooden chair and collapsed onto it so hard it groaned.

          “Is that really you?”

          “Yup.”

          “This is what scared the others so much?”

          “Yup.”

          “What did you turn into that got Frank so upset?  And come to think of it, how are you doing it?  Can you teach me?  Do you think we could become real monsters for Halloween?   When…”

          “Whoa.  Slow down.”  I told you that once George got an idea he really got it and I wasn’t kidding.  “Let me try to answer a few of those questions before I forget them, okay?”

          George bit his tongue impatiently, but nodded.

          “Let’s see, ‘What did I turn into that scared Frank so much?’  An older man.  You know, someone old enough to buy some beer without getting proofed.

          “Your second question was, ‘How am I doing it?’  I don’t really know.  I just focus on the shape I want to be and I just sort of start to flow into that shape.

          “Can I teach you?  I don’t know, I’ve never tried to teach someone.  I’ve only been doing this for about six months.

          “As for the rest of your questions, I don’t know.  I was hoping you guys would help me figure it out, but I guess that’s out of the question now.”

          “Yeah, I guess so.  The guys have done a real number on you.  At this rate, they’re gonna get you beaten to hell and back before summer vacation and I’ll never get to answer any of my other questions.  So what are we going to keep you safe?”

          “Darned if I know.  I was thinking of just leaving town.”

          “No way!  Don’t do that.  You can’t let the guys run you off like that.  I’m staying here for the night.  Let’s test out what you can do and think about what you can do to get even with Frank, Paul and Dan.

          “That would be great,” I responded happily and climbed back to my feet.  I didn’t realize how much that simple offer meant to me—to still belong somewhere, to still have a friend—until I realized there were tears coming down my face.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Five:  Guinea Pig

          The lab made your average movie dungeon look downright cheerful.  Oh, it didn’t have moss covered stone walls, racks or Iron Maidens, but it made up for that with white walls, sterile steel equipment and scientists.  They would object strenuously and then go away to pout if one of us compared them to Mengele or his friends, but we knew the comparison was more than just our angry rebukes at them for permitting the government to detain us against our wishes.

          Truthfully, we couldn’t even call them immoral.  They had more ethics committees and oversight than I had ever seen, more than I could have ever imagined before becoming one of their guinea pigs.  The amazing thing was no matter what the experiment, no matter how strange it was or how painful it was to one of us morphers, it always made it though those committees and the managers providing oversight always said, “Yes.”

          There seemed to be three directions to the research as far as I could tell.  The first was to determine the limits of our abilities.  The second was to determine whether we could successfully infiltrate a group without being detected.  Finally, they were trying to determine whether we could “impact others” as they called it.  What that really meant was could we change others or could our changing abilities be transferred to someone else.  No one cared how we had developed these abilities in the first place.  It was assumed we were genetic mutations.

          The answer to the first question was simple.  We could change our bodies, but not our clothes.  We could change into any biologically functional mammalian form with a loss of about ten percent of our body weight with each complete body change, less with smaller changes.  No giant spiders or amebas. But anything else from dolphins to dogs and pigs to people were possible.

          Today we were about the try to answer question number two.  They gave me two hours to observe this guy named George Jefferson—no relation to the television character—and then join his family on a tour of the facility in which we were imprisoned.  For two additional hours I would have to impersonate the man without any of his family members or the guide realizing there had been a switch. 

          Of course, we all knew that I couldn’t really do it.  No one could.  Two hours may be enough to pick up some basic gestures and turns of phrase, but not enough to learn the pet names, beliefs or emotional components of a human being.  For that matter, no one mentioned what business Mr. Jefferson had that would result in him visiting our prison.

          “Are you ready, Number Six?”  His name was Randolph, Mike Randolph and he wore a white lab coat, but I didn’t really think he was a scientist.  Unlike Mike, who I saw almost daily and who I had gotten to know and consider a friend as much as anyone could befriend their keeper, the real scientists rarely came near us when we were conscious and even then, only with level four hazmat suits. That meant that Mike must be a research assistant, or “stooge” as I preferred to call them.

          “I guess,” I sighed.  “You know this test is rigged against me, don’t you?”

          “Well, as Dr. Caldwell says, if we make it too easy it doesn’t prove anything.”

          “Dr. Caldwell could teach a demon from hell a few new tricks.”

          “Well, I’ll admit that he can be a tough taskmaster, but I wouldn’t know about him and demons,” Mike said with a slightly strained laugh.  “Anyway, please step into the shower and then get dressed.”

          “What is the thing about cleanliness you folks have?  I took a shower this morning, less than two hours ago and the most active thing I’ve done since is walk over to this wing of the prison.”

          “It’s not a prison…”

          “And the Pope’s not Catholic.”

          “But…but…”

          “You want proof?  Tell me the real reason for the shower.”

          “It’s for cleanliness…”

          “Tell it to the Pope.”

          “All right.  I admit there’s more to it than just cleanliness.  Dr. Caldwell doesn’t want anything bad to happen to you, so the shower coats you with a chemical that makes it easier to find you in case you’re hurt or injured.”

          “Or in case I try to run away.  Like I said—prison.”

          “Oh, very well.  I can see that I’m not going to change your mind.  Please get into the shower or one of the guards will bring you back to your residence.”

          With a choice like that it was easy.  I got into the shower.  Then I got dressed and went with Mike to take over the life of another human being.

          We waited on a stairway landing near the main entrance to the labs.  Jefferson was hanging back a bit, talking to someone I didn’t recognize.  As soon as his family and the guide passed, the door to the stairway opened, he went in and I was pushed out.  The guy doing the talking didn’t miss a beat and my new wife and two children never turned around, but less than a minute later the guide was paged and quickly left us.  Then, when we entered the first lab, the guy talking to me suddenly stopped and everyone turned to me expectantly.

          “Uh.  What?”

          “Well, this is your laboratory Dr. Caldwell.  We just thought you might like to explain what you’re doing here,” gabby guy explained.

          “Nonsense,” I bluffed.  “I’m just one of the many folks that make this lab work.  It’s only fair to allow some of them to shine rather than me.”

          “Here,” I grabbed a technician and quickly read his nametag.  “Let Mr. Chang here have a chance to show off a bit.”

          Chang Lei Wong gulped and I could see him pale momentarily, but then he squared his shoulders, stood up a bit straighter and began our tour, albeit with a rather thick accent.

          “This is one of the biogenetics labs, although we prefer to call it the ‘Limits Lab’ because our job is to help our volunteers to determine the limits of their skills…”

          The “volunteers” crack angered me.  We were “volunteers” as much as those folks in World War Two who stepped into the “showers” at Auschwitz or Buchenwold.  Like most prisoners, I had schooled myself to avoid showing emotion around the “monsters,” as we called the staff, and I was careful to do just that this time too.  Besides, it was more important to me to succeed at my impersonation than to correct one of the many misperceptions about us.

          As the tour went on, I nodded and agreed at appropriate times.  Chang wisely passed us off to another research assistant, Jack Weston, who did the remainder of the tour.  Just at the end of the tour, I saw Mike Randolph and I had to try for it.  We all agreed that it was our duty as P.O.W.s.

          “Mr. Randolph,” I called for his attention and watched him jerk like he had been bitten.  Dr. Caldwell must be a real bastard.  “Would you all excuse me for a moment?  I need to discuss something with Mr. Randolph.  Mr. Weston, please take my family to the Commissary and I’ll met them there in about twenty minutes.”

          Of course, I didn’t wait to see if he was going to object.  After all, I was the boss.  A quick gesture to follow and I headed for my office.  I noticed it during the tour.  Randolph followed like a whipped pup.  As I passed him I noticed that his nametag said he was Dr. Michael Randolph.  The fact that he didn’t correct me spoke volumes about his relationship with me—I mean Caldwell.

          Inside, I strode confidently toward my desk and sat down.  Saying nothing, I grabbed a folder from the credenza behind me and flipped it open.  Then, to make it look like my behavior wasn’t the meaningless charade it was, I flipped a few more pages before stopping and pointing.

          “Have you seen this, Randolph?” I asked imperiously and flipped the papers so he could read the typed material.

          When he bent over, I quickly picked up the phone and slammed it over his head twice, as hard as I could, and watched him crumple.  Quick as I could I was out of my Dr. Caldwell clothes and into his.  Rather than leave him completely naked, I tied him into Caldwell’s chair with Caldwell’s clothes.  The desk would protect his modesty.

          “I’ll go get it right now, Dr. Caldwell.  I should be back in about ten minutes,” I called back into the office as I bolted out the door, stopping only to close it, roll my eyes at Chang, and then start running.  At the exit to the lab, I called back.  “Dr. Caldwell said he didn’t want to be disturbed.”

          My first stop was the employee changing room where I took a fast shower, rubbing my entire body furiously to get off whatever crap they’d covered me in.  Then, back in Randolph’s clothes, I trotted out to the parking lot and ran up and down the aisles looking for Randolph’s car.  They should tell the “monsters” not to give us any personal information.  Randolph had recently complained about the price of removing a dent from his Hugo was more than the price of the car.  At the time, I was just amazed that there was still such a thing as a functioning Hugo anywhere in the country.  Now, it might just help me escape.

          I patted my pockets for the keys—and cursed.  Randolph must have left them in a locker in the employee changing room.  Yet another reason to thank Mr. Randolph for being frugal.  I wiggled the window hard and it popped, then slid down into the door well.  Reaching in, I unlocked the door, bent to look under the dashboard and realized that there was a toolbox in the back seat.  I was starting to get worried.  My luck was just too good.  Still, I fished around in the box and pulled out a flat-head screwdriver.  Jamming it into the ignition keyhole, I turned hard and there was another snap followed by a grinding sound as the stupid thing tried to start.

          On the fifth try the engine finally caught and I sighed.  Until then, I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath.

          Squealing tires, I headed for the main gate.

          When I got there the gate was down and the guard was in his booth watching a television.  I was going to have to give tribute to whichever saint currently represented human sloth, not that I really expected that there was one.

          When he didn’t move I waved.  When that didn’t work, I honked.  That finally got his attention, but the man had a real skill for moving slowly.

          “Wadda yous doin’ here?  I ain’t got no instructions ta let no one out?”

          “It’s me, Mike Randolph.  Dr. Caldwell wants his research notes.  I need to get to his house and bring them back as quickly as I can.”

          “Well, why didn’t ya say so, Bud?  Hold on and I’ll get the gate.”  Still moving at the speed of molasses, he headed back into the gatehouse, closing the door behind him.  A moment later he was sitting back by the television and a glance in my rearview mirror showed a military troop carrier truck coming up fast from behind.  Damn it!  The gatekeeper couldn’t even be decently slothful.

          I cursed again when several soldiers with guns at the ready jumped from the back of the carrier before it even stopped.  I would have been a lot happier if their automatic weapons were pointed at the gatekeeper instead of me.  Still, in for a penny, in for a pound.

          “Is there a problem, Officer?”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Six:  Jailhouse Rock

          Even the damned look forward to weekends.  The suits and the scientists go home to their families and their split-level ranches, their barbeque grills and their golf courses.  Even the guards loosen up on the weekends.  In fact, they’re the one’s who bring us most of the contraband we have—especially the night shift.  That’s why we had a weekly party starting on Saturday at midnight and ending before the start of Sunday’s day shift.  And when tomorrow you really could die, you tend to party as hard as you can.

          The deal was simple.  We provide the decorations and the entertainment; the guards provided the snacks and beverages.  Actually, they just brought in larger lunch boxes.  Gate security always checked them out, assuming they were smuggling in drugs, but they were actually smuggling in lunch.

          Of course, as morphers we weren’t allowed out to the local mall to shop for these parties, not that it would have helped if we were allowed out since we were never paid for any of the work we did.  The result was that the decorations were home made, but that didn’t stop them from being creative.  For example, Twenty-Seven could claim origami and calligraphy as two of her many craft skills.  This week’s centerpiece was that old standard, the three-foot tall, newspaper swan.  She also made the banner, but more about that in a moment.

          Nineteen worked at the base laundry and was personally responsible for most of its two percent damage and loss rate.  We all appreciated some of the finer quality items of clothing she managed to bring back to us.  Certainly they were better than the orange coveralls that were our normal uniform.

          Number Ninety-Two worked at Base Supply.  He got the booze.  Actually, he would get a small supply of lab quality alcohol.  Now that stuff was strong.  At about 190 proof—it might have started off as pure 200 proof alcohol, but as soon as it was opened it sucked in any water if could find in the air—a couple of quarts of that stuff went really far.

          I worked at the Commissary.  My job was to get the hair dye we used to color the sheets we used for our tablecloths and the tape we used to hang the banners.  Tonight’s banner reflected an accomplishment of sorts.  It was four years incarcerated here for Number One.  Four years and he was still alive.  No one would mention it, but it was a bittersweet celebration.  One hundred and sixty-eight of us had succumbed to what the monsters called “destructive testing.”  Heck, I was the inmate with the second longest residency here in hotel hell and I’d been here less than two years.

          “All right morphers,” a female voice called, “get in the dining room and line up.”  It tried to sound gruff, but the giggle from the twenty-something hippie in the guard uniform effectively undermined its impact.  Behind her were two other guards, a black male with a hairline that receded to the crown of his head and another white female, this one with short black hair and a piercing that she only wore on Saturday nights.  Between them were three large picnic coolers.  “The party starts in fifteen minutes.”

          After the laughter everyone laughed, they wandered off to their bedrooms to get dressed.  That was the phrase she used to announce that it was party night.  We never dressed until we know the right people were working the night shift for fear that someone in authority would figure out what was happening and stop it.

          “Hey, Julie?” I asked.  “Can Twenty-Seven and I get into the dining area ahead of the crowd to put up tonight’s banner?”

          “You mean ‘may’ not ‘can.”  Julie was a schoolteacher before she joined up and the Army, in its infinite wisdom, made her a guard instead of an instructor.  She never actually said it, but from our conversations it seemed pretty clear that being a guard with a masters degree in Education while people without even High School diplomas were instructors really bugged her.  Worse yet, after butting her head against the military bureaucracy for most of her enlistment, she had given up and was punishing the army, and herself, by doing a fantastic imitation of a drunk.  Luckily, she was a happy drunk, and had started before she got to our unit.  The slight slur to her words was a dead giveaway.

          “Sure, Six.  No problem.”

          “Are you willing to open the outer door too?”

          “Now Six.  Let’s not get too greedy, shall we?” she laughed.  “Go hang your decorations and get dressed.  We need to get this party going.”

          We quickly grabbed the banner and put it up.  While we were doing that One-Ninety-One and One-Ninety-Two, our latest arrivals, grabbed the rest of the decorations and started putting them out.  Twenty-Seven and I joined them as soon as the banner was up and then the four of us scampered off to get dressed.

          There were twenty-seven of us including the three guards, dancing up a storm and laughing.  It was fantastic.  For many of us, this was the only time of the week when we had anything to laugh about.  And the food helped.  Instead of the MREs we normally got, there was real home cooking.  Jackson, the male guard, brought ribs this week.  It past weeks he’d brought fried chicken and even ox-tail stew.  The man cooked a mean entrée. 

          Amanda was a snack food freak.  Her cooler always had the best chips, dips and general munchies you could imagine.  This week it included Buffalo-style chicken wings, not the wimpy stuff they sell in the supermarkets but the real—burn your lips off and carry them down the throat—thing.  I mean look, I’ve heard people who’ve been there and done that who talked about how much better the MREs are than K Rations and the like, but Jackson’s ribs or Amanda’s wings beat those MREs hands down and then some.

          One-Ninety-One and One-Ninety-Two were the “designated drivers.” Their job was to stay sober and make certain that the party ended and things were cleaned up before the arrival of the Day Shift at 6 AM.  So, instead of drinking our rotgut, they served it.

          And a good time was had by all.  Julie was dancing up a storm with two blonde, long-haired, golden tanned, surfer dudes with muscles, but tastefully so.  They were designed to her very own specifications—twins.

          Amanda, for all her bluster, bluff and butch appearance, was a sucker for cats, any cats.  Since we morphers could not change our mass beyond that we lost providing the energy we needed for each change, there was no way she was going to get tabbies, but she was in catnip heaven with a tiger, leopard and lion with which to play.  Good thing they were tame or there could have been real problems.

          Jackson…  Well, Jackson had a problem.  He always wanted two little black children, a ten year-old girl and an eleven year-old boy.  He would take them into a corner and ignore everyone else as he hugged them and touched them and spoke lovingly to them.  No, he wasn’t a pedophile.  He had lost his family about five years ago.  First his wife had divorced him and taken the kids.  Then, they all died in a fire.  He just really missed his kids.

          As usual, around four in the morning it was time for the masquerade.  Each morpher was given one chance to come up with the best disguise.  The rules were simple.  The shape must be different from our norm, the shape we showed the monsters.  The shape must be different; never the same shape.  The shape must be something that could be used during and escape or to hide afterwards.  Our three guards were the judges and their decisions were final.  The reward was the right to choose the entrée for next week’s party.

          Some of the newer morphers didn’t understand how deadly serious this was.  The miniature giraffes and the unicorns ever made it past the first cut.  The movie and television stars never made it past the second cut.  Surprisingly, politicians made it to the third cut.  I guess the logic was that even if they were recognizable faces, their political clout might help them avoid too thorough an examination by a tracker. 

          The ones that always won were the ones that blended in with the world around us.  One guy almost won with a tree stump.  Yeah, I know, the monsters don’t think we can do anything but mammals.  Would you correct the people keeping you prisoner?  Besides, he lost because of the pretzel he had wrapped around one branch.

          Anyway, this game in the final round we had four dogs, a Russian wolfhound and two full size poodles, an anaconda a mailman and a coed.  The first one cut was the anaconda.  Twenty-seven was given praise for her originality, but this was a temperate zone and anacondas really didn’t survive in this climate.  The poodles kind of ruled themselves out.  It was just too hard for the judges to decide which one was better so instead, they cut them.  It may not have been fair, but when I told you that the judges have final say, I wasn’t kidding.  That left the coed—blonde, cute, and somehow vaguely familiar—and the wolfhound.

          At that point, Number Two thanked everyone, especially the judges, but bowed out, saying it was unfair for him to win the competition when he had already won because he was the honoree for the party.  One-ninety-one and one-ninety-two led the cheering section trying to get him to reconsider—and they almost succeeded.  But at that point, Julie ruled him out, saying she had seen that morph before so the wolfhound won—and asked for a knapsack.

          Finally, it was time to clean things up and put everything back the way it was supposed to be.  We always allowed extra time because it’s hard to do a good job when you’re drunk.  The guards got to be the judges there too.  The dining room wasn’t “back to normal” until they said it was.  Our decorations all went back into our rooms.  The remains of the food went back into the coolers—after we placed the guard’s tribute at the bottom of the coolers.  The tribute was stuff we stole that the guards could sell for money to pay for the food that we ate.  It always amazed us, but apparently the gate guards never bothered to check underneath.  If we could become small enough to fit into a cooler, we would had the perfect escape route.

          About 5:30 AM it was time for bed and as a group we filed out of the dining room and off to our bedrooms.  We were tired, but happy.  Despite all the efforts of the monsters to make this place a living hell, we had still found a way to have fun, to forget the rest of the world and be the social creatures.  Sometimes, even hell can be fun.

          As I lay in bed, however, tired as I was I found that I just couldn’t get to sleep.  Something was bothering me, something about tonight’s party.  I just couldn’t quite place what it was.  I was still trying to tease it out when the guards called us to lunch.  Apparently, in hell, sometimes even a cloud can have a fecal lining.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Seven:  Turning the Tables

          I never went home again.  George said they never even noticed I was gone until the truant officer stopped by to see why I wasn’t going to school.  If Children’s Services wasn’t so overworked and handicapped by archaic laws, they might have got some jail time.  Instead, Mom got a year’s probation and so did Dad.  I was sad that they had been hurt—after all, they were still my parents—but glad that someone agreed that they hadn’t been very good parents.

          Instead, I started collecting clothes from the various bins where people would drop them off for donations.  I would sneak over to them at night, there were five in our town, and change my body so I was so thin and flexible that I could crawl in.  For the most part, they were surprisingly clean, although every now and then there was some wise guy who had tossed some garbage in.  Anyway, flashlight in hand, I would sort through the clothes and find all sorts of good stuff.  To make things easier, I limited myself to about a dozen different sizes ignoring those for babies and really young children.  It took only a couple of weeks to put together a relatively decent wardrobe for three sizes, a college girl, a businessman and a laborer.  Once a cop stopped by the bin and stuck his flashlight inside.  I guess the collection agencies were noticing a drop in donations.  Luckily, the bin had a funnel like drop so he couldn’t really see me, but after that I made sure to be even quieter and listen for any noises from outside.

          George helped too.  He snuck me food and even some occasional spare cash.  What I really appreciated was that he was over at the club almost every night.  God, I appreciated the human interaction. 

          I guess it wasn’t very surprising, but the others never visited the clubhouse again.  No one even thought to disconnect the electricity until fall leaf raking reminded someone and by then I was long gone.  I guess they didn’t want to remember what we had all meant to each other, but that was okay as it gave me more room to spread out.  Dan’s room became my lady’s boudoir, while Paul’s room became my businessman’s room and George’s room became my laborer’s room.  Each had different clothing, different personal items.  I even created different families for each, cutting pictures out of magazines in order to help the illusions along.  It was like a game, but a very serious game.  Things were going well enough, but I knew that it was a tenuous arrangement.  I had to quickly have my revenge on the others and move on or, more preferably, up.

          It was a short while later that I started working various cons to get enough money to live more comfortably.  I started off small.  I would pick a picture from a magazine and change my face and hair, sometimes my gender too, to match.  Then I would fill out a job application for one of the local fast food chains.  Most had a signing bonus that was received after the first day of work.  I would, work the day, collect my signing bonus and then disappear.  The con came in when I did it for the fourth or fifth time at each place.

          In the meantime, Frank and I schemed.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          It was hot and humid weekend day, a perfect beach day and everyone who could get away was there, which meant every high school student without a job and not stuck doing family bonding duty.  Of course there were others there, the new parents with their toddlers, some seniors walking along the sidewalk dividing the sand from the tarmac and even a few who middle aged adults seemingly lost amongst the masses of running and giggling teens.  Paul, Dan and George had staked out a spot between the volleyball courts and the water’s edge, away from their classmates.  There was no reason to expose themselves to the usual teasing and ridicule.

          Dan and George were staring out into the gentle waves of the bay, debating whether to go into the water or sun themselves a bit when Paul, always alert to opportunities, called for their attention.  “Guys!  Get a load of this,” he said, nudging the other two to get their attention.

          Turning, Dan and George saw the most beautiful girl they had ever seen; cascading blonde waves extended to the shoulder blades, a body that met and then exceeded every expectations of their dream woman and a face that would have put Helen of Troy to shame.  She was playing volleyball as part of a two-on-two game and her partner was setting her up for spike after spike.  The usual terms, “poetry in motion,” “as graceful as a swan,” “a dream come to life” were totally insufficient and they just sat there drooling as they tried to memorize everything about her.

          A final spike as she floated high enough to place her shoulders above the net and the game was over.  Her partner, a nondescript male who looked vaguely like their ex-friend Frank, faded away and the girl turned toward the still drooling boys.  Carelessly brushing some sand from her lean, taut belly, she stalked over to the boys.  Stopping about three feet from them, she took a defiant stance, feet spread and hands on hips as she glared down at them. 

          “I don’t mind being watched, but could you folks at least have the courtesy to stick your tongues back into your mouths?”

          It was like coming out of a fog.  They blinked, shook their heads and unglazed their eyes.  Slowly reviewing the previous few seconds, they realized she was talking to them.  The goddess was acknowledging their existence.  Dan and George guiltily averted their eyes for several second before being drawn exorably back to her.  Paul stuttered as he tried to speak.

          “You boys must be really hard up,” the girl observed laughing.  Even her laughter sounded heavenly.  I hope I gave you a good show.  The least you could do is help me get this sand off.”  Then, running toward the water, still laughing, she called back, “Last one in is a rotten egg.”

          Still not completely comprehending their good luck, the boys looked at each other questioningly.  Then Paul jumped to his feet and started running after the girl, followed by Dan and then George.  Reaching her first, Paul began to gently splash water into her.  The girl squealed and put up her hands but laughed and then splashed back.  Seconds later the other two joined in. 

          George, in response to being teased for being last, actually reached out to brush a few stray grains of sand from her thigh.  Everything stopped as the boys realized what he had done and stared fearfully at the girl, hoping she would not be upset.  Her laughter reassured them and she kept splashing them as she moved slowly into deeper water.  The boys followed like ducklings after their mother.

          Once the water was shoulder length, the girl moved closer and began touching them back.  First the touches were innocent, playful pushes and brief grasps as if to maintain balance, but quickly they evolved into more intimate contacts.  The final result was that all three boys ejaculated within the next five minutes.  George nearly drowned as he lost control of his limbs and slipped under the water with his mouth still open.

          Briefly solicitous, the girl slapped George on the back until she stopped coughing.  Then she smiled a bit sadly and said, “I’d better get back home.  We’re still unpacking and if I don’t help Mom and Dad are going to be really annoyed.”

          “Aw, don’t go.  It’s early,” Paul pleaded with Dan and George nodding supportively. 

          “Sorry guy.  I really don’t have a choice, but I’ll probably see you around.  My Mom says there’s only one high school and I’ll be a junior there.”  With that, she began wading out of the water.

          “Wait, please.  At least tell us your name,” Paul called after her, still hoping for a miracle.

          “Sure,” she called back brightly, “It’s Imogene.  Imogene Kidder.  But please don’t call me that.  I much prefer Genie, or at least Ima.”

          Without another word, she turned and was gone.

          Paul’s only comment was, “Damn!  We shoulda offered to help her unpack.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          “I swear, she was the best looking girl I’ve ever seen.  I mean forget about those movie stars or models.  This girl had it all,” Dan blathered on as they walked toward the high school to start the parent mandated horror of summer school.

          “Shut up, Dan.  There she is.”  Paul pointed to a figure at the corner.  Still two blocks from the school.  “Be cool guys.  Once she gets to the school the competition will start circling like vultures.  We’ve got to get her to be with us first.  Remember what we talked about?”

          “Yeah, sure,” Dan and George agreed, although without much enthusiasm.  There was little hope that they could really expect a girl as good-looking as Genie to hang around with them once the jocks started hitting on her.

          Paul scowled briefly at their negativism, but then quickly put a warm smile on his face and called out, “Genie!  Hey, Genie.  How’ve you been?”

          Turning, Genie looked confused for a moment, then brightened.  “Hey guys, how’re they hanging?” she asked with a sly smile.

          “Great.  It’s too bad you couldn’t stay at the beach yesterday.  It was absolutely fantastic.”

          “Yeah,” she sighed regretfully, “it probably was, but if I hadn’t unpacked, I wouldn’t be here today for the start of summer school and then my parents would have been really mad.”

          “Yeah, at least with you around things might be interesting,” Paul noted.  “You know, you left so fast we didn’t even get the chance to offer to help.”

          “Oh, that’s okay, it was mostly clothes I needed to unpack and you guys wouldn’t have wanted to have been putting away my lingerie, would you?”

          All three blushed, George brightest of all.

          “Or would you?” Genie asked, laughing as she poked George in the ribs hard enough to make him flinch.  “You wicked boy you.  Would you like to come by and model it too?”

          “N-n-no!” George nearly shouted, his shock at the accusation overriding his shyness.  “I don’t do that kind of stuff.”

          “Okay, big boy,” Genie responded soothingly, I was just teasing.  Maybe one of you other two would like to try my stuff?”

          Both Paul and Dan quickly shook their heads and a silence settled on the group for the next half block.  Then, Genie cursed.  “I don’t believe it,” she said as she stopped and dug though her purse.  I forgot my wallet.  It has all my identification.  Now I need to go back home and get it.”

          “No problem, we’ll go with you,” Paul offered hopefully.

          “Thanks boys, but I’m going to be late now.  I parents are going to be angry as it is.  If they find out I’ve made you guys late too, they’ll never forgive me.”  Once again, the girl headed off, leaving the boys to call after her.

          “At least tell us, what classes you have.  Maybe you’re in one with us,” Paul called out, but it seemed she was already too far away and didn’t hear.

          “Damn,” Paul muttered as they turned and trudged on toward school.  “We didn’t even tell her our names.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Eight:  Mole

          I hate being in charge.  People depend on you.  They care about what you think.  Worse, they actually do what you tell them to do—and in this place, that can mean people die.  It’s not that I wanted to be in charge.  For better or worse, everyone agreed that seniority would be the sole factor in selecting the Three.  Two was much better at it—so was One-Ninety-One—but no one would take orders from a seventeen year-old.  That meant that Two, Nineteen and I were the Three. 

          It was our job as the Three to organize the morphers against the monsters; to decide what escape plans to try and what resources would be allocated to which attempts.  Nineteen was willing, and fantastic about helping others, but she just didn’t have the skills needed to lead.  Normally, we just deferred to Two.  It was easier and it seemed to work, not that we were overly proud of our success rate.  One-ninety-one was going to do a critical path analysis of all our past escape attempts to see which ones had worked and which ones had failed, but he hadn’t had the time yet.  Of course, if he and his twin brother escaped next week, as was our hope, we might never see that analysis.  But then again, if their escape worked, the rest of us would be doing the same thing the week after and an analysis would be irrelevant. 

          Unfortunately for me, Two had been around less and less lately.  Instead of making the decisions we all needed to fight the monsters who had kidnapped us, pulled us from our friends and families and locked us up her so they could experiment on us without any legal recourse, he was being dragged away to be the subject of experiments for the monsters more and more often.  Lately, the experiments had been running for weeks at a time.  Thus, it devolved down to me to be the voice of the resistance. 

          “I’ve never tried to sew something like this,” Twenty-Seven advised me as she held up two very small strips of shiny cloth.  “Do you think these will do?”

          “What is it?”

          “One-Ninety-One and One-Ninety-Two’s costumes.”

          “That’s a costume?  Is one of them planning on working as a lifeguard?  I don’t think he’ll be able to use that as a suit.”

          “Uh, I said costumes—plural.  One-Ninety-One and One-Ninety-Two are planning to be strippers.  They won’t need social security cards or any other identification for a while and they can live off what should be pretty good tips.”

          It took a bit of effort, but I closed my mouth.  “I didn’t realize that was how they were going to support themselves.  Two was supervising that.  By the way, I sure hope those things stretch.”

          Twenty-Seven laughed.  “The specification was for a pair of costumes designed first for maximum tips and second for maximum ease of removal.”

          I rolled my eyes.  I couldn’t help it.  They would certainly help the twins get tips. 

          “Do they have everything they’ll need to get out?” Twenty-Seven asked.

          “I’m not sure…”

          “Number Two was supervising that,” Twenty-Seven said with a laugh.  “You miss him too much,  don’t you?”

          I had the decency to blush.

          “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

          “No.  The monsters aren’t too helpful with information like that.  They just take us and do stuff to us.  If we live, they toss us back here to wait for next time.”

          “Given that they’re scheduled to leave in a week and we don’t know when Two will be back, don’t you think maybe you should check?”

          “I hate it when you’re right, Twenty-Seven,” I sighed, but smiled to make certain she knew I was joking.  “But when you’re right, you’re right.”

          It took me almost a half hour to get to the twins’ rooms.  Everyone wanted something, even if it was just to see how I was doing.  Have I said I missed Two?

          “Hi, One-Ninety-Two,” I called after a brief knock.  There are no locks permitted on our bedroom doors and we routinely entered each other’s bedrooms with nothing more that a knock.  It’s a safety procedure as it reminds us all to be extremely circumspect about our escape planning.  Thus, after knocking, I walked in and stopped dead in my tracks.  From somewhere, I had no idea where, Ninety-Two must have requisitioned and then misplaced a dance pole and some spot lights, because there was a buxom blonde hanging from the pole wearing…well…nothing.

          Just because we’re morphers, doesn’t mean we have no feeling, no morals.  Before our “curses” manifested, we were just as ingrained into modern society and its mores as the monsters, maybe more.  My curse showed up on my seventeenth birthday.  One of my friends gave me a skin magazine, one of the ones with the foldout in the center, as a birthday present.  I had taken it to bed with me that night and found that I really, really, really liked the foldout.  As I got more and more excited, I started making noise.  That brought my parents.  Apparently, they thought I had hurt myself.

          What they saw was the centerfold, in their son’s bed, doing something they thought impossible to her crotch.  Instead of yelling at me, grounding me, or having that talk about the “birds and the bees” that Dad had been putting off, they called the cops to get the strange woman who has trespassing out of their house.  As seems to be the norm for the parents of teenagers, they listened to nothing I said.  Mom threw a robe at me and Dad just ranted and raved about the deplorable condition of society.  The cops came.  I was brought to jail.  The monsters heard about it somehow and the rest was history.

          Anyway, seeing One-Ninety-Two on that pole produced a tremendous blush and I just couldn’t stop staring.  One-Ninety-Two smiled and slid down the pole and into a back roll that brought her to her feet within touching distance of me.  She puckered up and blew me a kiss and then came even closer, hands out as if to hug me.  I was nearly trembling when her left hand rested delicately on my chest, but then her right hand slid behind me.  I thought she was going to pinch my butt or something and tried to move away, but instead, her hand grabbed a thin terrycloth bathroom and she giggled as she spun away and slipped it on.

          Strolling over to the bed, One-Ninety-Two gave a belly laugh as she sat and patted it, inviting me to sit beside her.

          “Uh, no thanks,” I said, trying to regain my composure.”  I think I’ll stand.”

          “Does that mean it was a good performance?”

          “Good?  It was great.”  I tried to make it sound like the commercial in hopes of adding a bit of levity to the situation.  I still wasn’t completely myself yet.

          “Thank you.  We’ve been practicing,” One-Ninety-Two said with a huge smile.  When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Did you want something or were you just taking in the show?”

          “Uh.  Oh!  No—no—I actually stopped by to see if you had everything you needed for your escape attempt.”

          “Trying to cover for Two again, huh?”

          I was still unsure of myself and doubted I’d get out another sentence as long as the last one, so I just nodded.

          “Yeah, we’re fine, thanks.  We just need a few costumes and we’re set,” One-Ninety-Two responded.  Seeing that I was still a bit uncomfortable, she morphed back into her norm—the shape she used most commonly.  It was surprisingly similar in size to the stripper I had just been gawking at, with similar hair color, but the jaw was blockier and jutted out much more than the girls had and the chest—well, his male chest couldn’t compete with the female chest he’d just been wearing and the robe caved in a bit.

          “Thanks,” I smiled and moved to lean on the desk, feeling much more comfortable than I had just a few minutes earlier.

          “Thank you,” was the response.  “It makes my brother and I feel just that much more comfortable that we can succeed when someone who knows who we are can be so taken in by the illusion.”

          “If that was an illusion, it was a great one,” I noted fervently, which just made him smile even more.  I was about to leave and let him get back to his studies when the door burst open and One-Ninety-One flew into the room.

          “I finished it and I was right,” he called out apparently before he saw me, because when he did, he stopped short and frowned, averting his eyes as he greeted me.  “Hello, Six.”

          “Hello, One-Ninety-One.  Two has been away and your escape is getting near, so I was just stopping by to make sure the two of you had everything you needed.”

          “Yeah.  Sure.  Thanks for asking.  “Uh, could you excuse us?  I need to talk to my brother.”  When I didn’t move quickly enough, he added.  “Privately.  Please.”

          As I made it to the door, moving as quickly as I could I heard One-Ninety-Two chastising his brother for being rude and I wondered what could possibly be so important.  That thought lasted only a few minutes as I was inundated in managerial minutiae—at least until it was time for the escape.

          As usual, the rest of us held back on our rations, hoarding extras for the twins.  In the privacy of their rooms, the twins bulked up as much as they could with half the hoarded rations and backed the rest aside for their escape.  On the day of the escape, we were all on edge, although we did our best to avoid showing it to the monsters.  We never even knew when the twins actually escaped.  The deal was that Ninety-Two rejected a shipment of goats for one of the monsters’ experiments, claiming they were ill.  The goats that were in the cage to be returned to the farmer really were sick goats.  The crate of blankets and linens that went off on a different truck to a safe house for the trackers was really the twins.  Guess which crate the gate guards examined and which one they did not.

          I was going to miss One-Ninety-One.  He had been a tremendous help.  Like I said, he was much the better manager than I.  Exhausted, that night I cleaned up and then dropped onto my bed hoping to get a few hours of sleep before we started planning the next escape, but when my head hit my pillow I was surprised to hear the sound of crinkling paper.  Underneath the pillow was collection of several pieces of letter-size paper with a sticky note on top.

          With a groan, I got back out of bed and sat down at my desk.  The sticky note read, “Here’s the analysis I’ve been promising.  I think you’ll find it very interesting, but I don’t recommend sharing it with anyone.”  It was signed “191” and there was a postscript.  “Thank 192 for convincing me to give this to you.”

          The papers were the analysis of the past escapes that had succeeded and that had failed over the past year and One-Ninety-One had been his usual through self, comparing dozens of variables.  Most were meaningless, but one very troubling statistic stood out.  Those escapes that had been organized by “The Three” had failed 93.4% of the time while independent escape attempts had failed only 61.7% of the time.  There could only be one explanation.  The Three was compromised.  Someone was selling us out to the monsters. 

          The obvious question was who was the mole.  I knew it wasn’t me and I almost immediately also ruled out someone not part of the Three as they would never have enough of any single operation to compromise it as successfully as they had been.  That left Nineteen or Two.  Both had been on the morpher unit for the past year and both had been member of the Three the entire year.  Nineteen had always seemed a follower rather than a leader, like Two, but that could have been a cover.  But how could I possibly think that Two was the mole.  He had done more to help more people escape than anyone on the unit.

          After an hour of going around in circles to no benefit, I gave up.  I had been forced to come to the conclusion that I had absolutely no way to tell which one was the mole.  With a groan, I rubbed my eyes and hid the papers in the tube that was the metal leg of my desk chair and put the rubberized cap back on.  Then I went to bed and tried to go to sleep, but for some reason my thoughts kept returning not to One-Ninety-One’s analysis, but to Two’s party. 

          It was actually quite annoying, especially since it was keeping me from sleep rather than helping me like pleasant thoughts usually did.  Giving up for the second time that night—or was it the third, I was loosing count—I concentrated on the party, but remained in bed.  I didn’t expect there was much chance of sleep for a while, but, if by some fluke sleep came, I was not going to stand in its way.

          What was there about the party that bothered me?  It wasn’t the guards.  They came and they went without really impacting on us.  No one talked to them about anything of importance.  In fact, both Two and Nineteen tended to stay away from them, preferring to watch the others having fun rather than join in.  It was only because it was his party that he even offered a new shape. 

          What was it that Julie had said?  Something about a repeated shape not being allowed, yet I didn’t remember him ever participating in the morphing contest, let alone using that shape for the contest.  Could it have been before I was incarcerated here?  Then why did the shape seem familiar?  It was an average blonde female figure, twenty-something.  She could have been a graduate student, a secretary, a waitress, a store clerk…

          I knew who the mole was, but now I needed to figure out how to prove it.  I got absolutely no sleep that night.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Nine:  Game, Set, Match

          It was a single lunch period during the summer instead of the two sessions during the regular school year so the lunchroom was crowded with teachers and students, all trying to make the best of an unpleasant time and wishing they were somewhere, anywhere, else but where they were.  Paul, Dan and George were at their usual table, two rows in from the lunch line and three from the windows.  It wasn’t prime real estate, the noise from the lunch line made it hard to hold a conversation, but there were much worse spots, like the geek and freak tables near the tray return while, the jocks, the cheerleaders and the preppies had first claim to the better tables by the windows.

          “Have either of you guys seen Genie yet today?” Paul asked as he searched to lunchroom.  His hope was to catch her at the door, before anyone else could grab her for himself or herself. 

          “Nope,” George barely looked up from his tray as he shoveled down his lukewarm burger and fries.  He was still smarting from the suggestion he like to wear female clothing, he never had and he never would, he swore to himself, but now that it had been mentioned, despite his internal verbalizations of bravado, he couldn’t shake a deep down curiosity about what it would be like, what the different clothes felt like, whether it made you feel different and think different thoughts.

          Dan too had been scanning the lunchroom unsuccessfully.  “I wonder if she skipped.”

          “Don’t know,” was Paul’s response.  “Maybe.”

          “Damn, she was hot,” Dan sighed.

          “And friendly, very friendly,” was Paul’s response.  He picked up his milk carton to take a sip, only to have it jostled so much that a bit spilled.  The deep booming laughter behind him alerted him to the identity of the person behind him and he held back the angry retort he had been about to make.  Matthew “Bulldog” Maitland was twice his size and downright nasty if you got him angry.  Instead, Paul glanced at his brother for a hint as to the huge football center’s mood before he turned slowly and looked up.  Maitland was not scowling and that meant that he could be spoken to if one was cautious.

          “Hi, Bulldog.  How’s it going?”                      

          “What’s this about you losers latching onto a ‘hottie’?” he asked.  Apparently, the bump wasn’t accidental, but neither was it the start of some retribution game so Paul breathed a sigh of relief and answered.

          “We meet this girl, Genie, a the beach this weekend and she was hot.”

          “Right.  Hot.  Who are you guys trying to fool?” he sneered, the beginnings of a frown forming.

          “No joke, Dan chimed in, brotherly love overriding foolhardiness as he attempted to split the big guy’s attention and maybe confuse him.  “Her name was Genie, Imogene Kidder, and she really was hot.”

          “Yeah,” Paul added.  “Just wait until you meet her.  She’s so pretty you’ll forget your name.  Blonde wavy hair down to her shoulder blades with a body and face to die for.”

          “Sounds good.  I can’t wait to take her away from you losers,” Bulldog responded with his deep booming laugh as he headed off to the jock tables.  They could hear him laughing as he told the others about what Paul and Dan had said.

          At least ten other people approached the guys and asked them, both together and individually, about the new girl.  It wasn’t that the guys were well liked, because they weren’t—tolerated was a more appropriate description.  It was more that this was still a small town and anything new was interesting.  Still, as they headed home from school that afternoon, Paul couldn’t help but wonder aloud what had happened to Genie.

          “Don’t know.  Like I said earlier, maybe she decided to skip after all,” was Dan’s response.  George just grunted and kept playing his video game as he walked.  As he approached the intersection where he turned to go to his house, he looked up and stopped in his tracks.  Paul and Dan, caught up in their discussion of Gene’s whereabouts, didn’t even notice he had stopped until he shouted out, “Hey, Genie.  How ya been?”

          Sitting on the sidewalk at the corner, wearing the teeniest halter-top and short-shorts he had ever seen, was Genie, sipping at a small soda from one of the local fast food places.  As George rushed up to her, quickly followed by the other two, he noticed a brown bag by her side.

          “What’s in the bag?” he asked before realizing that he was too shy to talk to girls and turned beet red.

          “Oh, just a little present for you for later,” Genie answered with a peculiar smile, not that any of the boys noticed.  “So, what are you guys going to do now?”

          “Just hang,” Paul answered.  “There’s not a lot to do around here.”

          “Oh, there’s got to be something we could do.  The town I came from was pretty small too and we still found stuff to entertain ourselves.”

          “Not around here,” was Dan’s glum assessment.  “There really is nothing to do in this burg.”

          “Well, I’m bored.  I missed school today.  When I got back home for my wallet, my Mom decided she wanted me to help her unpack, clean and put away all the dishes, silverware, pots and pans and stuff.  I didn’t even get to hang out an meet any of the folks at my new school.”

          “Well, I don’t know if you’ll like it,” Paul offered, “but we usually go to my house and play video games and stuff.”

          “Okay.”  It was that simple.  Genie was introduced to Paul’s and Dan’s Mom and they headed to the basement, the guys new clubhouse.  After a brief stop for snacks, they settled in for some good old- fashioned shoot-em-up action.  Paul let George play with Dan first while he tried to pump Genie for information.

          “So, where do you live?”

          “Over on Elm.  I’m not sure what the house number is yet—I’m terrible with numbers, that’s why I’m taking summer school, to catch up—but I have it written down on a piece of paper in my purse, so I know I can find it again.  It’s a light green, with the cutest darker green trim and these nice flowers just inside the fence.

          “Cool, I don’t usually go down that street, but now I’ll have to stop by some time.”

          “Great.  I’m sure my Mom would love to meet you boys, but I’m kinda bored right now.  Are you guys sure you can’t think of something else to do?”

          “Well,” George answered without looking up from the game and probably not even realizing that he was speaking to a girl, “there isn’t even a mall here, just a plaza with a few fast food places and a couple of stores.  Even the local department store closed last year and hasn’t been replaced.”

          “True,” Paul smoothly stepped into the conversation as George got to an especially hard section of the game and stopped talking to concentrate.  “There’s the beach, the Interstate, the plaza and the school.  That’s it.”

          Genie harrumphed and stomped her foot before going over to the television set and changing the channel.  It if weren’t for the glorious view of her behind, one of the guys might have objected.  As it was, they sat quietly, waiting to see what Genie had in mind.  Finding a sitcom, she turned the volume up and turned to the guys. 

          “There are three of you and one of me.  I’m completely at your mercy and there’s nothing you can think of to do?” she asked in the sultriest voice any of the boys had ever heard.  Paul had the cushions off the sleeper sofa the family kept in case of visitors and the bed opened before the other two could react.  When they saw Genie smile, George and Dan smiled too.  Standing, they escorted the most beautiful woman they had ever seen to the town’s newest den of iniquity. 

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          “Did ya hear what those losers are claiming now?” Sarah Jaskow from the cheerleading squad whispered to the other girls at the lunch table.  “They said they had sex with that Genie girl and that she did the dirty deed with all three of them.  Yuck!  Can you imagine doing something like that with those boys?”

          “What are you girls whispering about?” Tom Langley asked.  He wasn’t a starter, just second string, but his Dad was the town’s mayor and he always seemed to know all the dirtiest gossip.  After a brief check with the other girls, before telling a boy anything so intimate, she spilled the beans.  When they were done, he started laughing so hard he fell off his chair.  That got everyone’s attention and he had to explain.  Still, this was too juicy.  He had to hold back just a bit.

          “This is Gene Kidder we’re talking about?  New kid in town?  The loser triplets have been making all sorts of outrageous claims about her, sexual and otherwise?”

          Sarah nodded.

          Well, then you should go down to Johnny Burger this afternoon.  Go around back and check out the new kitchen helper.  If that’s who they’re ‘dating’ those guys are really sick.” 

          They pressed him for more, but try as they might Tom just smiled enigmatically and refused to say another word.  He just made a promise to himself to be at Johnny Burger that afternoon when the gang got down there.

          Frank, sitting quietly at a table nearby smiled and left the lunchroom to make a phone call.  He too spent the afternoon smiling enigmatically, especially as he watched all the others boys and girls in school treating Paul, Dan and George like they’d just grown third heads.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          “Uh, you guys aren’t supposed to be here,” the young guy wearing the apron and Johnny burger hat lisped as he stood beside the dumpster behind the restaurant.  He was only about five feet tall, with scraggly, grease coated blonde hair down to his shoulder blades, the worst case of acne in the state and enough excess weight to be able to see the rolls underneath his dirty tee-shirt.

          Sarah made a face, both at the mess in the alley behind the restaurant and at the man she was standing before her, but the others had elected her as spokesperson so she bravely asked, “Are you Genie Kidder?”

          “How do you know my name?” he asked suspiciously.

          “You don’t have a sister, do you?” Sarah plowed on, ignoring his question.

          “No.  Now you folks better leave.  Like I said before, you really shouldn’t be here.”

          “Do you know three boys from town?  Paul and Dan Ogilvie and George Thompson?”

          The boy flashed a blissful grin for a moment, prompting a spontaneous “oooh” of disgust from several of the other girls before he said, “Why do you  want to know?  I ain’t done nothing wrong.  Now get out of here before I call the manager.”

          With that, he hurried back inside, slamming the screen door closed behind him.  The group of girls looked at each other in shock.  Then, with a group shudder, they all ran out of the yard to tell their boyfriends.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          “That’s that,” Frank said somberly as he sat across from me in the living room of the old clubhouse.  “The retribution has begun.  None of those guys is going to make it out of summer school without some major bruises and there reputations will be so badly damaged that they’ll never get near another girl at school for the entire next year.”

          “I’d say that was a fair revenge,” Gene Kidder said as he melted and flowed until he was in his laborer form.  “I know you’d prefer Genie, but there’s nothing more for me in this town.  It’s time to leave and this body is more suited to what I’ll be facing for a while now.”

          “Do you really have to go?  Why not wait until I’ve graduated and I’ll come with you?”

          “We’ve been through this.  I’d love it, but we both know that would never work.  I’m some kind of freak and somewhere, sometime, I’ll screw up and then it will be all over.  I couldn’t live with myself if I ruined your life too.”

          “Al least keep contact.  I don’t want to lose another friend.”

          “I will, when I can.  I’ll use the Internet, like we discussed.”

          “So you’re leaving.  Now?”

          “Now.”  There were tears on both of our faces as I turned and left.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Ten:  A Court of Competent Jurisdiction

          Two days later the “tame morpher” was back on the unit.  Two guards brought him to the door to the common area and shoved him through.  As soon as he caught his balance, he morphed.  The two morphers in the room at the time greeted him.

          “Welcome back, Six,” Twenty-Seven greeted him.  Ninety-Nine just nodded and headed toward the bedrooms.

          “Did One-Ninety-One and One-Ninety-Two make it?”

          “Why don’t you sit down, Six?  Ninety-One just went to get Nineteen.”

          “They didn’t make it, did they?” Six groaned and sat down hard on the first seat he could reach.  “Are they okay?  Did they bring them back here?”

          “Nineteen will be here in a moment.  Let her tell you.”

          Seconds later, Nineteen rushed out from one of the bedrooms.  Seeing Six, she hurried to him and hugged him.  “Welcome back, Six.  It good to have you back safe and sound.  We were worried.”

          “Thank you, but please…tell me about One-Ninety-One and One-Ninety-Two.  Are they okay?” Six grabbed Nineteen’s hands, staring up at her, begging her to tell him and praying it would be good news despite the growing certainty in the pit of his stomach that it was anything but good news.

          “One-Ninety-One will be fine once he recovers from his wounds…”

          “And One-Ninety-Two?  Is he okay?”

          Nineteen hesitated.  Tears began to drip down her face.  “One-Ninety-Two is dead.  Four shots to the head by one of the trackers—after being trapped.  One-Ninety-One says the tracker laughed as he shot him.”

          There was only one choice.  We held each other and cried.

          “Did I miss the funeral?”

          “What funeral?  You know the monsters take the remains and dissect them.”

          “I know, but we’re not monsters.  We can bury our dead.  We can honor them and grieve for them.  We can be civilized creatures despite what they do.”

          “That would be nice.  One-Ninety-One would like that, I’m sure.  Maybe we can have Twenty-Seven set up a memorial.”

          “That sounds great.  We can have the service right after the trial.”

          “Trial?”  Nineteen was totally confused.  “What trial?  What are you talking about?”  Suddenly her eyes went wide.  “Oh!  You mean…  Damn, I so hoped you’d be wrong.  I’ll set it up.”

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          The common room had been cleared out and then three tables were set up at one end of the room.  The one closest to the wall had three chairs facing the room.  The other two tables faced the first one and had one chair each.  Nineteen, Twenty-Seven and Fifty-Six stood behind the first table.  Two and Six stood behind the other two tables.  Behind them were all the remaining chairs from the dining room, compliments of Julie, Amanda and Jackson.  Every chair was filled.

          Nineteen stood and called for silence.  “We are gathered here to judge the actions of one of our own.  Two has been accused of being a double-agent, of working with the monsters, with helping to keep us imprisoned and with assisting the monsters to recapture those of us who escape.  How do you plead?”

          “I deny the rights of this court to judge me and my actions.”

          “You can deny all you wish, but this hearing will continue.  I ask you again, how do you plead.”

          “And I again state that this is a kangaroo court with no authority to judge me or any other morpher.  I am your leader.  As such I act as I see fit to better the lives of my fellow morphers. “  Two swept the room with a glare, challenging anyone to deny his right as leader.

          “Nineteen.  Who got you that job in the laundry that has helped us obtain the clothes our fellow morphers have needed for their escapes?

          “Twenty-Seven.  Do you remember when the monsters denied us all items that might be used as weapons—no knives, no needles, and no material that could be used to make ropes?  You almost committed suicide until I got you that knitting material.

          “Shall I continue?  Can any one of you challenge the actions I’ve taken in behalf of morphers?  I think not.  Did any one of you ask what I had to barter away to get those things?  While the rest of you have been cursing the monsters and petulantly refusing to comply with even the simplest of acts, I’ve been talking to them, negotiating with them, bartering with them, even pleading with them to help make our stay here just a bit more humane and bearable. Can…”

          “Save the discussion for later.  How do you plead?”

          Two stood and tried to walk out of the room, but Ninety-Nine and One-Ninety-One blocked his egress.  They stood facing off against each other for more than a minute as everyone held their breath, then with a sigh, Two sat down again, but refused to respond to Nineteen’s request for a plea/

          “In the absence of a formal plea, the Three submit a plea of not guilty.  Six, having waved his right to serve as judge will present the case against Two.”  With that Nineteen sat down and Six stood up.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

          “…and that is what happened when I pretended to be Two.  I find it highly unlikely that the ‘wild morpher’ as the trackers called him, killed anyone if he did not kill the hobo who was a clear and immediate danger to him.  That said, the only possible explanation I’ve been able to come up with is that helping the trackers does nothing but aid them to capture and imprison more innocent morphers.  If this assumption is true, then Two has clearly been helping the monsters.”

          Nineteen turned to Two and asked, “Would you like to respond to Six’s report?”

          Two just waved impatiently for Nineteen to move on.

          Do you have anything more to present?”

          “I call One-Ninety-One to summarize the results of his analysis of all of the escape attempts this last year.”

          One-Ninety-One whispered to Seventy-Three, sitting beside him and Seventy-Three took over guarding Two.  Then he described the difference in the effectiveness of escape attempts that were planned as compared to those that were spur of the moment.  “Thus, the only possible conclusion is that someone is advising the monsters about planned escape attempts.  That someone needs to be one of the three people that have been involved with those escape attempts, which means it has to have been one of the Three.”

          Nineteen called for silence to stop the ugly murmur from the rest of the group.  “The Three to which One-Ninety-One is referring are Two, Six and myself.  Six is the one prosecuting this case and Two is the target of this case.  Would anyone like me to step down from judging?”

          There were murmurs again, but no one actually spoke up, so Nineteen responded saying, “In the absence of objections or volunteers, I will continue.  Six, do you have anything more to present?”

          “Nope.”

          “Two.  How do you respond to these charges?”

          “I do not.  They are baseless and insulting.  I stand by my previous statements.  I have done nothing to harm our community and everything to make it more bearable.”

          “Kill the traitor.”  It came from someone in the group behind the tables and several others echoed the call. 

          Six raised his hands for silence.  When he got it, he turned to the group.  “I, for one, do not wish to lose my humanity and become more like the monsters.  I have no interest in killing anyone, but I am not satisfied.  While I am convinced that Two has been helping the monsters by acting as a ‘tame morpher’, it is clear that the trackers think very little of us and that they would prefer to kill us regardless of orders to the contrary.  It seems likely that without a morpher present to help catch the ‘wild morphers’ alive, more of us would die.  And while I do not condone Two’s actions, working with the monsters in this way, I can understand his reasoning. 

          “Negotiating and bartering with the monsters also makes sense.  Whether I like them or not, the monsters control everything.  The only way to get any creature comforts here is by negotiating with them and, quite bluntly, none of the rest of us have been willing to do that dirty, thankless job.  What’s the saying?  When ‘it’s the only game in town…’”

          “Uh, Six?  What are you doing?  We didn’t talk about this?” Nineteen asked nervously.

          “I’m talking about the penalty for helping the monsters,” Six responded calmly.  “The three of us were responsible and the three of us should be penalized.

          From the murmuring in the audience, Six was making sense.  Nineteen tried to think of some way to reverse the course of the discussion, to bring it back to Two and his behavior rather than a mandate regarding the effectiveness of the Three.  “Can we please finish one task at a time?”

          “Certainly, Nineteen.  You’re absolutely correct.  We should do this in an orderly fashion.”  Six turned to the jurors.  “Folks, was it right for Two to work with the trackers?”

          “No!”

          “Even if it meant saving the life of at least one morpher?”

          “Murmurs, some saying “yes” and some saying “no.”

          “Would it be acceptable to help the trackers if we could be sure that we could save morphers from dying?”

          “Yes.”  It was positive, but not unequivocal. 

          “Close enough.  How about the charge of aiding and abetting the monsters?  Was it right for Two to do that?”

          “No.”  Not surprisingly after the last decision, this “no” was a bit more hesitant.

          “Uh, Six?” Nineteen asked.  “Why are you undermining your own case?”

          Ignoring Ninteen’s question and Two’s confused but curious expression; Six continued questioning the rest of the morphers.  “Would you feel better if there was more oversight of what kind of negotiations with the monsters were allowed?”

          “Yes.”  This was just about unanimous.  Six’s fellow morphers were beginning to understand where he was going.

          “Good.  We need to work on that in a bit, but first, I have a question of my own.  You see, there’s something I just don’t understand.

          “What I don’t understand is why, after all that effort to help people escape and knowing that the only way to end our captivity is to make the world aware of our existence, Two would then turn around and undermine the escapes that were the only chance to obtain those goals.  I can’t believe that turning in his fellow morphers was a part of any deal with the monsters.  It would be against his own interests.  So,” Six turned back to Two and asked, “why?  Why would you sabotage our escapes?”

          “I have never knowingly done anything to hinder the escape of a fellow morpher,” Two responded with remarkable dignity.  After refusing to defend himself and after Six’s eloquent defense, it was almost like he had grown two feet and earned nobility in the eyes of his fellow morphers with that single statement.

          “Uh, Six?” Nineteen asked nervously, “You’re undermining your own case?  If you didn’t think Two was guilty, why did we have this hearing?”

          “Because, while Two is guilty of acting without the advice and consent of his fellow morphers, someone else is guilty of betraying all morphers.”

          “Now wait a minute,” Nineteen complained.  “We’re here to judge Two, not for a hunting expedition amongst our fellow morphers.  Let’s finish voting on Two and finish this project, then worry about the next real or imagined threat.”

          “Actually, my true purpose for calling for this gathering was to see if I couldn’t find out who…”

          “Darn it, Six.  This line of exploration is out of order.  All you’re doing now is confusing me and, I’ll bet, everyone else.”

          “Is it?” Six asked the group.  “Is it out of order to discover that we have a mole and who that mole is.”

          “NO!”  It was a unanimous response from the jurors.  Even Two, Twenty-Seven and Fifty-Six chimed in.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Chapter Eleven:  Postscript

          I stood proudly before my fellow scientists, behind the dark mahogany podium as the slide show demonstrated some of my more interesting discoveries regarding the morphers.  I was just beginning to describe the potential value of morpher blood as a comprehensive regenerative power that would regrow human limbs faster than a speeding surgeon and let create spies that are perfect doppelgangers for the person we want to replace when the screen when blank.

          The expletive stuck in my throat when the entire audience began to laugh hilariously.  Turning back to the screen it now showed a picture of me, Douglas Murchison Caldwell, Ph.D., Director of Morpher Research for the Central Security Agency of the United States of America, standing on a white sand beach in a lime green bikini bottom.  To say the least, the skimpy suit exacerbated my small potbelly, pale skin, hairless chest and graying wavy black hair with dueling widows peaks in a manner less decorous than was desirable considering my position and status.  As I watched the screen a similarly colored top faded into existence. 

          My body started to morph into a female form, but all I could think of was that morphers can’t produce clothes and now I would be improperly dressed.  My skin slowly became smoother and picked up a healthy tan.  My hair grew, gleaming black.  The top filled in and my face smoothed, nose shrinking a bit, cheeks rising a bit, head size shrinking a bit.  In and of themselves, each change was miniscule, but as a whole it meant that what had begun as my image was now a strikingly female image instead.

          If I had discovered this at the lab, I would have just fired my assistants for doing something so unconstructive, but to allow it to be presented to a group of my peers was unthinkable.  I’d have to work up a penalty worse than death.  That reminded me to check on the effectiveness of the latest morpher serum.  So far, the available versions required weekly boosters or the recipient died.  Maybe I would need to select some new volunteers.

          Of course, the fools just couldn’t leave well enough alone.  Next, there were subtle changes; the most notable being an extension of the canines and the woman was evil incarnate, a vampire or something of that ilk, with a facial expression a cross between a snarl and a sneer.

          “That’s enough,” I shouted, trying to get the attention of the person running the visuals, but I was drowned out by the laughter.  This was intolerable.  Abandoning the podium, I marched off to the A/V booth and pounded on the door impatiently.  There was no answer so I grabbed the doorknob, turned and yanked. 

          The door opened, but not to a room full of electronic equipment; instead it was a room I had hoped never to see again.  With the cheap institutional desk and chairs, the wilted looking American flag and the ugly felt banner proclaiming that the Panthers football team was league champion for the fourth straight year, it could only be the office of James Bannister, Guidance Counselor.

          “Come on in Mr. Caldwell.  We need to talk about your future,” a gangling, bespectacled, beak-nosed man with conservatively short brown hair called.

          “That’s quite all right.  You were incompetent then and I cannot imagine you’re going to suddenly become competent in my dreams.”

          “That’s not an option, Mr. Caldwell.  Now come here and sit down.”

          As if to confirm my belief that this was a dream, I suddenly found myself sitting as instructed without memories of crossing from the door to the chair.  The chair was solid wood and just as uncomfortable as I remembered being some thirty years ago.

          Bannister sat in his chair and said nothing as he leafed through a folder, presumably my high school academic records.  I had been an outstanding student in high school so intellectually I knew I had nothing to fear from him, but still the pompous ass had a way of making everyone around him feel inferior and in that respect, I was no different.

          Finally tearing himself away from the folder, Bannister raised his eyes just enough to look over his glasses at me, “So, tell me Mr. Caldwell, what do you plan to do once you graduate from high school, assuming you do?”

          I sputtered in indignation, but thirty years had taught me to respond to bullies and fools like him and my father much more effectively.  Instead of bothering to engage him, I merely said, “You are a dream, actually a nightmare, from a time long past.  I didn’t even bother to attend your funeral and I take great pleasure each and every day in showing exactly how wrong you were.”

          Bannister’s face turned red and it was his turn to sputter.  The desk disappeared and we were now in the living room of my parent’s house.  My father somehow appeared from behind Bannister, in all his hulking, drunken glory while my mother appeared sitting, on the couch behind Bannister and my father, oblivious to everything except the knitting she always had on her lap.  I had often wondered if that was her way of staying out from under the target of dear old Dad’s drunken tirades.

          “Mr. Basnnister tells me you’re failing every class in school…”

          “Bull!  I’ve got straight ‘A’s.  That drunken fool Bannister’s reading the wrong record.”

          “Don’t interrupt me,” Dad roared and charged up to me sticking his face just inches from mine.  “I’ve seen the records, Darla Caldwell.  You’ve failed nearly every subject and those you passed were with ‘D’s.  What are you planning to become when you grow up?  A whore?  A maid?  A burger slinger?  Or maybe you want to spend the next forty years working in sewers like me?  This is absolutely not acceptable.”

          When this had really happened, roughly once a month while I had been growing up, Bannister was never involved and my grades really had been straight “A”s.  The yelling occurred whenever I got less than a hundred on a test or paper.  Ninety-nines were completely unacceptable.  Surprisingly, even knowing it was a dream I felt the old emotions, fear and anger toward my father for being a bully and a drunk, loathing for my mother for not intervening on my behalf even once and anger and disappointment with myself for not showing my father up by being even better than he expected.

          “I have higher grades than anyone in the school, probably than anyone in any school around here.  What do you expect of me...”  I trailed off having just realized what he had said.  “Darla?  Who the hell is Darla?”

          “Don’t curse at me you little slut…”

          “Don’t call me that!  I am NOT a slut.”

          Even as I said it, I realized my body was changing.  I was becoming exactly the image of the woman I thought my father thought I was, long blonde hair, big chest and buttocks, long legs, pretty face with too much makeup and wearing a short dress with a plunging neckline that showed more of my “assets” than anyone would consider decent.

          “It’s only a dream.  It’s only a dream,” I kept telling myself.

          “That’s right, that’s the slut you are.  A real bitch in heat…”

          When he said that I snapped.  I couldn’t help myself; I started barking at him.  Would you believe it, me, Major Douglas Caldwell, Ph.D., MD, a female dog?  I looked up at him from about his waist level as I barked and growled.

          Like I said, dear old Dad was a bully and, like most bullies, a coward.  When I growled, he backed away, bumping into Bannister who was standing behind him.  The feeling of power was overwhelming.  I snapped my jaws and he tried to push Bannister backward in his frantic efforts to flee.

          Again, that feeling of power.  Again, I couldn’t help myself.  I bit him.  Right on the leg, I bit him.  It felt absolutely wonderful to be in control, to be able to give back just a bit of the pain and suffering after all these years.

          That’s when my mother finally decided to do something.  She threw the lamp from the end table beside her at me, hitting me in the face.  I woke screaming from the dream as I heard her words, “Get out of this house you filthy morpher.”

          “Doug?  Doug!”  Patricia called out to me as she shook me, trying to help me return to wakefulness.   “You’re having that dream again, aren’t you?”

          Bolting upright, I almost knocked Patricia off the bed.  It took a few seconds to slow my heart rate and focus in the dark sufficiently to confirm that I was really in my own bed and still myself.

          “Doug?  Are you all right?”

          “Yeah.”  I slipped my feet off the bed and into my slippers.”

          “You’re not going to go back to sleep, are you?” 

          “No, dear.”  I reached for my robe at the end of the bed.  Standing, I put it on.

          “You can’t keep doing this, Doug.”  Patricia started crying.  “You need to talk to someone about it.”

          I wanted to stay and explain why I couldn’t do that, but we both knew I couldn’t bear the thought of being so weak, so not in control.  With a sigh, I left the bedroom closing the door on Patricia and her tears.

          The dreams had been coming ever since I began doing Morpher research.  Early on, I learned that it would do no good to go back to sleep, the dreams would just return and if I kept waking Patricia with my screams I would soon be a divorcee.   Thus, after stopping at the refrigerator for a cold beer, I went to the den and started going over the latest research results.

          Chang had been doing good work with the biological aspects of morphing.  He had just disproved my hypothesis that there was an increased electro-magnetic characteristic the counterbalanced a weakened cohesiveness between their individual cells. 

          Just before his defection and untimely death, Robinson completed the last of the massive series of tests I had outlined to test morpher blood and had reported that every single test confirmed that there was absolutely nothing unique about morpher blood, despite the fact that injecting it into a human’s blood stream gave that human morpher abilities for about twelve hours.  Checking through the papers, Caldwell confirmed that Robinson had done both an MRI looking for nanites and more than a hundred slides under and electron microscope in order to rule out subnucleonic structures.

          My team had uncovered no new information regarding how morphers morph or how to transfer their capabilities to others since the second week of the project nearly three years ago.  There were a dozen more similar monographs and I went through each one with a fine-toothed comb, looking for that one missing piece of information that would crack the morpher riddle.  If it was there, I didn’t find it.

          As I was going through the reports a second time, I heard the sounds of my family waking.  With a silent curse, I put everything away and got ready for the new day.  It was going to be fun telling the people who ran Project Morpher that there was no progress for the thousandth time.  How much longer will they let me continue as Director of Research if I don’t start producing results?

-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Make of it what you will.

To some I am a devil.

To others I am a friend.

Make of me what you will.

There’ve been those that hunted me.

There’ve been those who helped me.

But most don’t care at all.

One day I’m free and roamin’.

The next I’m back in jail.

Studied and swallowin’ gall.

My story has no beginning.

My story has no end.

Make of it what you will.

                                                                        — Meta Blues

                   Eighteen