BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (3 page)

And then he felt it. The
blood drained from his face—a painful feeling, as if he were upside
down for too long. His heart quickened then slowed to a deadly
pace, and his breathing slowed even more. The first thing he
noticed was his hands: the tips of his fingers had become a dark
purplish blue. The blood must have drained from there
too.
  

All of a sudden the smell
changed to something familiar, something irony and cold yet piquant
and earthy. His breathing evened out, but his throat felt
desiccated. Santino felt funny, weird, out of sorts. What was wrong
with him? Why were his fingers blue? Now able to use his limbs
again, he flung back the covers and saw a horrid image. His limbs
had doubled in size, hardened and bulging with veins that protruded
every which way. His feet were discolored the same as his
fingertips. Without warning an ache shot inside his mouth, causing
him to double over.
  

“
Help
me,” he gasped. He fell on the floor, and the transformation
continued. His teeth sharpened to razor points and doubled. His
skin stretched and tightened over his face, and
pinned
 
his ears back. Santino’s eyes drew deeper into their sockets
and glowed a bitter black. His fingernails sharpened and became
hard as metal.
  

The hair on his head fell
out in tufts as he desperately tried to stop whatever was happening
to him. His up became his down; the noise outside became too loud
inside. The lights were too bright, and then they were dark. His
skin felt tough in some places and smooth in others. His muscles
knitted together and became hard and rigid.
  

Crawling on all fours, he
looked at himself in the vanity in the corner. “What am I?” he
asked. Pulling himself off the ground, he felt his equilibrium even
out and found that his body felt steadier.
  

The mirror told no lies.
He was no longer Santino. He touched his face and began to feel a
stinging sensation in his eyes. It felt like tears, but he couldn’t
tell; he could hardly see. He heard water running in the other
room, but his hearing felt constricted. He remembered Kurma had run
out. He looked back at his reflection—still hideous. Every time he
looked at himself he felt that stinging in his
eyes.
  

“
Go find
Kurma,” he instructed himself. Something had happened to him. He
needed immediate emergency care. Kurma probably would freak out,
but at the moment he just wanted whatever had happened to him to
un-happen to him. The medical bills were the least of his worries.
He pulled his lips from his gums and was mortified at the sight.
His teeth gleamed ivory in the light. And there was that stinging
pain again.
  

Santino turned and headed
toward the door. He stumbled into the hallway and called out to
Kurma.
  

“
I need
to get into the bathroom!” He banged on the door. “Open up. I need
your help!”
  

“
I
can’t,” Kurma said. Her voice sounded like someone had stroked
strings in Santino’s head.
  

“
What?”
Santino asked. Moving closer to the door, his nose picked up a
scent—red, warm, meaty…skin. His stomach lunged, and his body
naturally reacted. He felt out of control, hungry, mad. So many
things at once. Grabbing for the doorknob, he found it was locked.
Santino sniffed again. The smell was so intoxicating, and it was
coming from the other side of the door. Banging harder, he said,
“Let me in now!”
  

His voice changed
octaves—deeper and powerful. There was no response from Kurma.
Santino felt his skin prickle. His throat became drier, and he
suddenly realized why: he didn’t want to see Kurma. He wanted to
taste her. But why? His hands clawed at the door, peeling the
paint, as his animal instincts took over. He was hungry and
thirsty, and he couldn’t control himself any longer. He shoved the
door, and the wood splintered and cracked. He heard the water go
off.
  

She’s in
there
, he thought. Another shove and
Santino propelled himself through the door. The first things he saw
were gray, steely eyes, big from fright. ‘Whose eyes were they?’ he
wondered. Kurma didn’t have gray eyes. The creature’s screams broke
into his thoughts and brought him back to the
present.
  

He realized Kurma was half
crouched in the tub, naked and wet. He lunged at her and was met by
another shrill scream.
  

4.

K for
Kurma
  

Running to the bathroom,
Kurma’s feet thudded on the floor. She practically fell through the
door and immediately threw up into the sink. Her stomach didn’t
feel right, and she had no idea why. Santino had forgotten to put a
condom on and maybe that was making her anxious.
  

Yet Kurma never threw up
due to anxiety. If anything she became fidgety and felt the need to
prioritize and organize something. This feeling she had now was
intense. It was as if her stomach was being turned upside down. The
pain in her lower region was backbreaking. She tried to steady
herself but became faint. Goosebumps rose all over her skin, and
her body’s temperature dropped.
  

Her breath came out in
frosty puffs as if she were outside in the cold. Kurma was scared
to death. What had she done to deserve this? She had sex one time,
and all of a sudden she felt so ill. Falling to the floor, she
clawed at her stomach. Her insides were on fire, and it felt like
her internal organs were being torn out. Her belly button, most of
all, felt like someone was ripping it out with a metal clothes
hanger.
  

Tears fell from Kurma’s
eyes. She felt weak as she tried to call out for Santino. Reaching
up to the doorknob, she saw her skin changing colors. Quickly she
snatched her hand back. She steadied it in front of her. Like a
chameleon trying to match its surroundings, Kurma changed from
olive to pink, from pink to yellow, from yellow to a weird
fish-scale pattern. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Fine hair
sprouted in patches from her hands to her arms, baby blue like
bird’s eggs. Frantically she stood up and tried to claw the
feather-like hair from her body. Lines of blood appeared where she
tore and scratched.
  

Kurma was about to
hyperventilate; she had no idea what was happening to her. Just as
her temperature had dropped, it rose again and soared to an
unbearable heat. Kurma felt as if she were on fire. Tearing at her
hair, she screamed out loud and fell into the shelves of
toiletries
 
behind her. No matter what she did, she was on fire, and the
hair didn’t stop growing. Twisting the shower on, she threw her
body into the water, and was quickly released from her
hell.
  

Water ran down her face
and back, and matted her waist-length hair to her body. The pain in
her stomach ceased, but everything else tingled. Her stomach felt
empty, as if there were a void in her middle. Kurma feared the
worst. She didn’t even want to think what that feeling
meant.
  

Even though her body felt
shaken up, Kurma did feel better. Suddenly she heard a voice that
sounded like Santino’s.
  

“
I
can’t,” she said. “Hear you,” she finished quietly to
herself.
  

As she opened the shower’s
glass door, she heard the doorknob rattle. Kurma remembered what
her skin looked like and froze. Santino couldn’t see her like this.
Grabbing the nearest towel, she huddled in the shower and turned
off the water. What would he say when he saw what she had
become?
  

There was a bang at the
door.
 
Oh my
God
, thought Kurma.
 
He’s going to break down the
door. My mom’s going to kill me!
  

Her hands began to itch,
and her body felt lightweight. She felt the need to escape the tiny
bathroom, but Santino was on the other side of the door trying to
charge in. She faced a dilemma, and felt the fight-or-flight mode
come over her.
  

There was another loud
thud at the door, and Santino’s ginormous body came crashing
through. At that very moment, there was a blinding pain in Kurma’s
eyes that made her body spasm out of control. In an instant her
limbs bent in on themselves, and it felt as if her muscles had
stretched and torn at an unbearable rate—too quickly for Kurma to
brace herself.
  

Santino looked deformed as
he lunged for her. Throwing her hand up as a shield, she realized a
huge, steel rod protruded from her wrist, sharp and piercing. In
shock she screamed at the top of her lungs and fell forward out of
the tub. She saw Santino’s teeth and eyes and knew she was in
jeopardy.
  

In response to the animal
that was Santino, Kurma’s body transformed into a beast. It was
twice the size of Kurma’s normal physique. The steel rod—now
attached to a baby blue-colored wing covered in thin skin—knocked
Santino backward, giving Kurma a full view of herself in the
mirror. Her eyes widened in horror. Her feet were no more; in their
place were two bony legs with claws bent at odd angles. Her torso,
the biggest part of her body, was round and covered with the blue
hair she had seen on her arms. Also, she had wings! And they were
so big; she couldn’t fully open them in the bathroom without
knocking something over. Instead of five fingers she had four, with
the metal rod acting like a fifth ligament. Her mouth let out a
shrill scream that sounded more like a caw.
  

Santino roared at her, and
she answered with a swipe of her rod, which she used liked a
dagger. Kurma wanted to get away from him; she wanted out of this
house. She needed to get herself outside where she could use her
wings.
  

Santino bit and snapped at
Kurma, and clawed his nails deep into her body. Raising both winged
arms, she clumsily shoved him against the mirror, breaking the
glass and drawing blood. Kurma plunged her dagger into Santino’s
shoulder, and silver blood spurted out. Santino heaved back, and
Kurma smashed through the door into the hallway. She felt ungainly,
but tried to get her chicken-like legs to the nearest
exit.
  

She could hear Santino
behind her. She couldn’t fight him; in fact she had no idea what he
was capable of. She needed to regroup and clear her head away from
everybody, especially
 
her family. Kurma spotted a
window, and was preparing to leave down the fire escape outside
when Santino swiped at her head and barely
missed.
  

Kurma felt the glass of
the window shatter against her skin as her huge body propelled
through it. The sun lit her body and the wind swept her up. Kurma
felt light as a feather. Flinging out her arms, she began to panic.
Back and forth she moved her wings, but it seemed like they weren’t
working as wings should. Her body twisted through the air, and she
heard screams. Finally, in the last instant, her wings created
enough momentum, and she glided over a group of onlookers’
heads.
  

She heard their voices:
anger, fright, and shock. She turned her head and caught the
people’s reactions and expressions. Kurma bet she looked like
something out of a comic book.
  

Suddenly she caught
something big falling fast in her peripheral. She heard a loud thud
and felt vibrations in the air as the ground shook. The screams
she’d heard when she’d launched from the window were nothing
compared to what she heard now. Slowing her wings, she steadied her
body upright and saw Santino rising from the fall. In the blink of
an eye, he snarled loudly and attacked the nearest bystander. Red
blood splattered the sidewalk as he ripped the innocent man’s head
from his shoulders and bit into it.
  

The crowd erupted as the
corpse fell into a puddle of red-hot
liquid...blood.
  

5.

A Raptor is
born
  

Kurma’s hair whipped about
wildly, wet and cold, clinging to her face and eyes as she flapped
her wings in a steady beat. Tirelessly she flew higher and higher.
She didn’t want anyone below seeing her.
  

Everything was going
wrong. There were so many thoughts scrambling in her head, mainly
about Santino. Before Kurma had flown away, she had seen him in a
frantic craze. She had never, in all her time knowing him, seen him
act that way. He’d looked possessed, irrational, like a demon from
hell. What was it that had turned him into a monster? What had
turned her into a…
  

Well, she didn’t really
know what she was. She could fly, Kurma knew that. And she didn’t
have regular body parts. Her fingers and toes and legs were all
very different now. She didn’t have any human skin to speak of, and
she knew her lady parts were completely gone. Her body was covered
in fine, short hair, and her legs were scaly and bone thin. She
didn’t feel the urge to eat people as Santino did, so she knew she
wasn’t anything like him. Though maybe she hadn’t seen Santino eat
anyone, she tried to tell herself. Maybe she had still been in
shock from him trying to attack her. Although, now that she thought
about it, he’d been trying to eat her as well!