by E G McNally
She was toning up very well, for what she wasn’t sure, but by the end of the two weeks she could run the ten miles in under an hour and a half, and aside from her good luck avoiding Ranulf’s poundings the first day, she was getting better with her defense response time, and both Ranulf and Arnulf were landing shots less and less. She’d dealt with the mornings fairly well, but the afternoons were beginning to wear on her. Finally she’d had enough.
“Stop it already,” Taylor yelled at the professor. She was getting fed up with his little electric shock treatments, trying to stimulate the change, which he’d perform for several hours each afternoon.
“No, damn it. You need to change, everything depends on it,” the professor stressed, the pleasantness of his voice long gone from his frustrations during training.
“But I need to heal, and I’m hurting, please,” Taylor whined, slumping over in the small wooden chair she was strapped in. She took a deep breath and shook her head, causing the little electrode wires hanging over her face and chest to tangle together. She looked at her arms, small and large bruises alike were forming on her arms from Arnulf’s earlier assault, and little burn marks were etched into her flesh from the electric shock machine that the professor was using. All the ‘training’ was beginning to show, and Taylor’s ability to heal herself, was weakening. Each day she was awaking with more and more bruises remaining from the previous day and the burn marks from the electricity were not going away at all.
“What is he doing to me?” Taylor whispered the words she meant to think.
“Helping you, damnit – Now change.” The professor shouted, and then turned up the dial on his machine to full throttle and watched Taylor. Her body tightened, each muscle balling into an uncontrollable Charlie-horse, teeth gritted tightly against a slice of leather propped into her mouth, and nails digging into the wooden armrests on either side of the chair. A small wisp of air escaped her mouth as she attempted to scream in desperation, but then disintegrated into midair, as she lost total control of her body.
The professor left the machine running longer than a minute, showing no signs of emotion towards Taylor, only watching with a straight and worn face.
“Stop it, you’re killing her.” Esa screamed at him. “You never did this to any of us,” she declared, and then reached for the knob and turned it all the way down releasing Taylor from the involuntary tortuous electrocution.
Taylor grasped for breath, sucking in all the air she could, filling the painful stabs in her chest from the absence of air.
“If you can’t deal with this than get out here, Esa.” He shouted at her, knocking her back, away from the controller.
“She needs to learn the change, and gain control of her powers, and now.” He exclaimed, “You’ve seen the news just as I have – more and more children are disappearing and Major Bradshaw is getting ready to make his move, without her under control, we will have already lost.” He said, with anger welling in his voice.
“Now, either help, or get the hell out of here.” He shouted, sending Esa into a fit of tears.
“Sorry, Taylor, I can’t watch this.” She said, tears drenching her face, and then stormed off, out of the gym.
“If either of you are going to short out, you’d better leave as well.” The professor hissed at both the Wolfe brothers, looking each one up and down, like wrestlers – judging their strengths.
Although they were in disagreement with the professor’s methods, both the Wolfe brothers understood what he was trying to do and knew of no better way to hurry up Taylor’s transition, and therefore did not put up a fight with the professor.
“No, we’re fine,” Arnulf, spoke for himself and his brother, sharing a glance of fear.
“Good, now let’s get back to work.” He moved his hand back over the dial.
Still gasping and chocking for breath, Taylor whinnied out a small cry, “No more, please.”
“Fine, I didn’t want to do this, but it seems I have no choice. The professor quickly began un-strapping Taylor’s arms from the chair. “Quickly, help me,” he harked at Ranulf, pulling the electrodes from her head and arms.
The professor pulled one arm around his shoulder hoisting Taylor from her sitting position. Ranulf joined in supporting Taylor’s other side with his shoulder.
“Hold her there,” the professor instructed to Ranulf, “don’t move.”
He stepped back – Taylor lifted her head, eyes glazing over from the exhaustion, and looked at the professor as he drew from behind his back, under his shirt, a pistol.
“What are you doing,” Arnulf shouted out, startling the professor.
“The only thing that’s worked so far,” he responded, nose flaring and teeth gritted.
He raised his hand up, directing the pistol at Taylor’s head, placing his index finger on the trigger, and squeezed gently, mumbling under his breath. “Please work.”
Silence filled the air as both Arnulf and Ranulf held their breaths sharing another look of fear and confusion. Neither one willing to stop the professor, in his determined spree of chaos, nor pretending to understand his methods anymore, held their places and made no sudden movements to stop him.
The ricochet of the bullet tore through the room, slicing through the air like a hot knife on butter, exposing the mixed screams of anger and fear, resentment and shock, alongside the gut wrenching sound of the bullet splitting open her skull and nestling deep inside her brain, still and deadly, awaiting Taylor’s timely death.
Taylor fell limp in Ranulf’s arms. He fidgeted with her body keeping her from hitting the ground, and then slowly leaned her forward lying her limp lifeless body on the pale cold wooden floor of the gym.
“You killed her!” Ranulf said accusingly, wiping away a drizzle of blood where it formed at the bullet hole in her head.
“No,” the professor screamed and then threw his body over hers frantically feeling for any sign of life – wrist, neck, airway – “wait,” he hushed the boys. “She’s breathing,” he pointed to her chest. A slight but apparent rising and falling rhythm of breathing was occurring.
Almost instinctively the professor broke down into a stream of regretful tears. “Oh God, what have I done?” He began to question his own methods. Looking back at the sadistic turn he’d taken trying to transform Taylor.
Arnulf smacked the professor across the face. “Snap out of it, if she’s breathing you can still do something to help her.” He reminded the professor. Half afraid of the professor’s response to the smack and half afraid that Taylor was going to die. Arnulf bolted across the room and into the office, where the professor kept his medical bag and retrieved it, quickly redirecting the professor’s thoughts. He crouched down beside the professor and fumbled through the bag searching for something to remove the bullet with or at least something to stall the bleeding, until he was interrupted.
“Look, look at this,” Ranulf pointed to the bullet hole where he was wiping away the trickling blood. The skin began to bulge outward like a thick layer of wrinkles piling up on an old man’s face and then all of the blood that was trickling out, sucked back into the wrinkly bulge exposing a hard metallic bullet squishing its way back out of her head.
“Wow . . .” was all any of them could say, speechless from the miraculous scene unraveling before them.
The bullet finished working its way out of her skull until it rolled off her head and clinked coldly on the floor below. She gasped loudly as if she’d just regained the ability to breathe and then blinked. Where the pure black had once glistened inside the pearly white edges of her cold human eyes, the white was vanishing from her eyes. Like a thundercloud swiftly floating to cover a town, so too did the black billows fill her eyes, swirling around until not one ounce of any other color existed exposing two lustrous almond shapes barely recognizable as human.
Her skin began to shift color, slowly like the sky shifting from day into night, darkening into a shadowy black. She reached one arm back, one darkening glossy
arm back, to part herself from the very ground she was laying on, and as if she were waking from an awkward sleep, she twisted her head around her shoulders, stretching. She then steadied herself allowing for two long and brilliant leathery wings to burst out of her shirt from between her now black shoulder blades and then finalize their position draped over her crouching body, as if she were an angel ready to spring for an attack. And then, as the minute details of her body were correcting themselves, her long glossy tail, emerged through the back end of her pants, ripping a hole in her jeans. She glared at the professor, with her razor black eyes, and a long gurgling growl rumbled from deep inside her throat.
“You tried to kill me,” she hissed.
Everyone had stepped back from Taylor, while she was changing, surprised by her response, and the professor, slightly afraid of her, especially after shooting her, and rearmed himself with the pistol that he had earlier dropped on the ground.
“Um, just listen, please Taylor.” The professor stammered, taking in a big gulp of air, a bit afraid of what stood before him. Never before, even with Will, had he seen something so majestic and frightening. She was beauty incarnate touched by the devil himself, both mesmerizing with her glorious grace and terrifying with her untamed spirit and wild fervor beating in her eyes.
“And you helped him,” she looked first at Arnulf and then Ranulf, and then twisted her head back around staring into the professors old worn eyes.
“I’m s – sorry Taylor, but I had too, look what it’s done. You changed, look.” He handed her a large mirror from his bag, placing the pistol into the bag carefully so as not to startle the newly changed gargoyle in front of him.
“You could have killed me,” she uttered the words more deeply this time, never breaking her focus.
“But I didn’t, and now we are one step closer to controlling your change.” He explained, trying to calm her down, feeling the tension rise in the room. One wrong word and she would snap possibly killing everyone in the room and destroying anything in her path.
“We . . . are closer to controlling my change,” she hissed. “Is that all I am to you, something you can control, something you can order around, to do your dirty work? Why should I trust you, what makes you better than, say, Major Bradshaw?” She hissed again, tilting her head side to side still maintaining focus on the professors golden brown worn eyes.
“I don’t want the stone for myself. I only want it to stop the Major from using it to rule the world. If he gets the stone then he’ll be sure to kill anyone opposed to his rulings and nothing and no one will be able to stop him.” He desperately tried to settle Taylor’s hostility, but only seemed to push her further into resentment.
“So in order to stop him I owe you my allegiance. Why should I owe anything to anyone after all the hell I’ve been through?” She paused; glaring so evil a stare that medusa herself would have turned to stone. “I’ve lost my parents, my best friend, my grandparents, and now my life, why should I owe anyone anything?” She declared her true feelings, so passionately that the gym itself could not hold her overpowering emotions, and the wooden walls and floors began to quiver.
If only Jake were around he would be able to settle her down. And then, as the thought became a harsh reminder of the things she had lost, she released a loud ear splitting scream.
The windows in the building burst into powder and remained suspended in midair while she released her horrifying scream. The wooden floors began undulating from her body like the focal point of an earthquake and the spring board floor broke apart quickly followed by the various other obstacles set up inside the gym.
The professor and both the Wolfe brothers covered their ears, hiding from the painful scream of agony that Taylor bellowed out. They watched as she clenched both her clawed fists tightly together around her temples as if she were trying to forget something terrible, and she closed her eyes tightly, trembling with anger. The professor made a step towards her reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder, anything to stop her from screaming, and then. . . she was gone.
Like a burnt out light bulb, rather than leaving a flash of light and disappearing, she simply disappeared, almost taking the very light that was present around her, leaving where she had stood, only a small wisp of dark mist that within seconds also dissipated, and with her went the chaos. The room fell silent, the floors stopped undulating, the walls ceased from bowing, and the shattered windows’ fine mist fell to the ground leaving only an eerie silence, the room once full of overflowing emotion was now empty and hollow, as if all the water in the ocean just suddenly went dry.
“Taylor,” a voice beckoned to her in the darkness of the night.
“Where am I,” she asked, peering around the moonlit snow covered forest. Nothing was familiar, not a sound nor smell, not even the trees were familiar. Glancing down at herself, she noticed she was still a gargoyle, with her jeans tightly pressed against her leather legs and her t-shirt stretching over her body, pulled tightly by the wings that had burst through the back part.
“Taylor,” the voice beckoned again, this time more loudly as if it wasn’t just a thought in her head, but a person searching, searching for her.
“Who is there,” she whispered into the darkness, browsing past the shadowed brown trunks of the trees that poorly hide her black body against the white snow. There was no response, and she wasn’t sure she was actually hearing anyone outside of her head anyway, and so she didn’t respond again, and decided to figure out where she was instead.
She found a tree large enough to support her weight and with great feline dexterity, climbed to the top of the tree and leapt into the air, swishing her long black wings outwards catching the evening drafts, allowing her to climb the sky high enough to see that she was clearly lost.
Peering as far as she could see, hoping a small town or road or something might give away her location, she glided on.
“Taylor, where are you going?” The strange voice asked her, almost a familiar voice.
“Are you in my head?”
“Yes,” the voice spoke again. The voice was becoming more and more familiar as if it were someone from her past, someone she used to know.
“Who are you, what do you want?” She hesitated. “How are you in my head?”
“I’m a friend. Let’s just leave it at that. I’m in your head because we share something, something very important to people that are not us. Those people want it back, people that we can give it to, and then have a normal life back.” She couldn’t put her finger on the voice, but somehow it made her feel calm and secure, she wanted to trust the voice, prayed that she could trust it.
“Say I believe you, what do you want me to do?” She asked the voice without hesitation. The invitation of a normal life sounded appealing, too appealing. She never imagined that she could ever want to just be a regular foster kid again, and move every few months into another home and resituate herself over and over again, but all this turmoil, rollercoaster of emotions, was wearing on her, and she wanted it all to end, all to go back to a regular old boring, nothing to do, nothing to change lifestyle.
The voice went quiet, with nothing more to say to her.
Despite her new appearance and her unknown strengths and abilities, Taylor felt more afraid and helpless than ever, with that voice pushing her over the edge of reason. She glided around the countryside looking for something small or abandoned a cottage or a shack, something where she could settle for the night and gather her bearings.
She wondered if she just jumped through space to get out here, and wondered if this was one of the abilities the professor was talking about. Now she just had to figure out where here was. She spotted a large lake with a hut on one side – it appeared to be empty. Swiftly landing on the frozen ground behind the hut, she peered through some small single paned windows to make sure no one was present – it appeared to be abandoned, and that was fine, she wanted to get a fire going and find some food. She was ravishing, tired and cold.
Not knowing how she did it the first time, she pictured herself near a fireplace cozy and warm, eating biscuits with strawberry jam smeared on them. Once the image was clear enough inside her mind, she closed her eyes briefly, and a strange tingling feeling overwhelmed her senses.
“Oops, where am I now?” She looked around at the scene surrounding her. She was definitely not in the hut, not even in the same area, but standing in the middle of a street. A Street full of cars and trucks racing back and forth in the dark moonlight, with tall, tall buildings scrunched together, packed tightly into a small bay. “Is this New York?”
A car horn warned Taylor that she was in its way.
“Oh my god what is that?” Some woman screamed, accompanied by the hysterical screams of other random people on the streets.
“Crap I need to get out of here,” Taylor quickly thought of leaving the city, away from the commotion and the hustle, and then closed her eyes again.
This time, less confident of her ability to control her space jump, she opened one eye and then the other, silently peering around hoping to be somewhere more useful.
“Oh, boy,” she sighed. “Back where I started, guess that’s better than in the city.” She said, looking around at again nothing familiar in the dark night. There were different trees, new unaltered snow covered hills and fields, and again no houses or signs of life anywhere. She scurried up another tree, tossing her graceful body into the night sky and began scanning the fields for another possible place to hide out.
