Authors: Sezin Koehler
Lisa Wolverton, aka Trip
Y
ou’re nervous about sundown in a few hours, much more than you let on with the detectives. The memory of the god-awful pain of your bones breaking and re-forming from the wolf is fresh. Even though from what you remember of last night’s party, your first turn was seamless and painless. Looks like that was just a fluke.
Cursed. As if having a period isn’t bad enough, now you get a side of transformation with your cramps. How’re you going to get anything done? How will you hold down a job? And if you ever meet a guy, what then? If you got pregnant would the baby even survive the full moon? Surely a wolf’s uterus and a human’s are two different things, how would that even work? Maybe instead of hunting mushrooms you’ll track down someone with a cure for this unfortunate affliction.
Crawling out of your skin. The discomfort has already started. Anticipation of the torture to come. At least you’re not violent, right? Not like in the movies when the minute the person turns they become a throat-tearing monster, roaming the streets, killing at will. Biting, turning others. At least you’ve got that going for you. A civilized monster. Or will that change too? Oy vey. Too much to consider. Too much unknown.
You wish your mom were alive. Did she have answers? Did she even know? Is this why she never talked about your father?
Your father. You don’t even have a name. Maybe he’ll be the one with some answers. Bide your time, bear your pain. Once you’re outside these walls, the hunt is on.
1:45 PM The Roswell Institute
I
n The Institute’s minimum-security wing on the second floor Jason Mars—one of many resident alien life forms—once again argues with Dr. Fleischer.
“Why isn’t it working yet?” Jason shouts, his hockey mask-like face flushing with maroon energy.
“When you came back to us, we made it perfectly clear that there were no guarantees. Regrowing a penis is not in our usual roster of procedures, as you well know!” The doctor shouts back, frustrated at this prickless prick.
Jason can’t take it anymore. The constant urge to procreate native to his Martian species, unable to find release since a copulation gone wrong lost him his member. He’s going crazy. He needs sex. Bad.
“I feel like I’m gonna explode. You gotta figure something out!” Jason paces back and forth, his huge figure towering over the doctor.
“Are the drainage sessions not working? Have you tried the prosthesis?”
“Dialysis for my dick is not why I returned! You were supposed to fix me.” Jason gets right up in the doctor’s gaunt face. Dr. Fleischer feels a rush of rage through is body.
“What the hell do you think this place is, Jason? Fucking Hogwarts? I cannot perform magic tricks and miracles. Plus, the Colonel deprioritized your situation. You have a problem with that, go speak to him.”
Jason raises his hand to strike the doctor. Lowers it. “GODDAMMIT!” he screams and punches the wall, leaving a hairline fracture in the cement. “Fuck you very much, Doc.”
The doctor fights the urge to flip the birdie and leaves the room, the sliding airlock door slipping into place behind him. Jason collapses on his bed, head in his hands.
You cannot imagine how frustrating it is
to have your one primal urge remain unfulfilled
. The Prozac made him less depressed about his situation, but did nothing to affect his sex drive as it does human specimens. Maybe it’s time to go home. Maybe
they
can fix him. He looks around his sparse cell, the monitor that records his every bowel movement and fruitless masturbation sessions as he grinds what’s left of his member against the mattress; the flat screen television that doubles as a communication board. Why the hell is he wasting his time here anyway?
The screen lights up, the words
Incoming call
flashing across.
“Accept call,” Jason says looking up into the harried face of Colonel Ransom. Jason jumps to attention.
“At ease, J.”
“How can I help you, sir?” The colonel is the only person who frightens Jason. Besides that purple-eyed bitch whose vagina destroyed his penis, that is.
“I’m calling you to active duty. We’ve got three specimens we need to repatriate and a hell of a lot more who’re gonna call this place home,” the colonel snarls.
“If I agree, will you reprioritize Project Regrow?” Jason goes for it.
The colonel thinks, his trigger finger itching to put bullets in what little manhood is left of this creature. “Fine. Suit up. You’ve got an hour.” The screen goes black.
No thanks or nothing.
Okay, Colonel Ransom. I’ll go on your little mission. But while I’m out there, I’m making contact with home. Enough of this Earth shit. If you can’t help me, they will.
Jason’s pale, spotted face breaks into a wicked smile.
Jason Mars
H
ome. Mars. It’s only been eight years since you’ve been gone, but it feels much longer. And especially since the incident that deprived you of your most valuable appendage.
The idea of rape was a new concept for you. On Mars, if you want it, you take it, no questions asked. On Earth it’s a whole different story. The females expect kindness, dates, dinner and a movie. In theory, their custom is one of consent. That’s never sat right with you. You couldn’t quite get the hang of it. And you came to enjoy the struggle, the physicality of it. Holding them down to take what you want. The sounds of their muffled screams through your hand over their mouths. Martian women just lie there, that’s what they’re taught.
Then again, it was one of these “rapes” that landed you in the Roswell Institute in the first place. The chick was one of the Level 4 creature handlers. You met her at a bar. You had your fun, but she was pissed after and shot you with a tranq dart as you were pulling up your trousers, sated for the moment. The next thing you know, you’re in a cage and they’re running test after test on you. Eventually they give you aboveground permission seeing as you’re not a threat to the populace in the same way as the other monsters housed in The Institute’s metal walls. Good thing, too. You lost count of how many times The Institute bailed you out of situations, made “rape” charges go away or disappeared the women who brought them against you.
And oh the irony that your mission on Earth was to procreate with human women, since their gestation cycles are shorter than the women on your planet. With a population in decline, Martian emissaries were sent to all known inhabited planets. The active theory being that Martian hybrids are better than a race that dies out. You were one in a team of ten sent to Earth and not a one succeeded. The anatomy is a match, but the seed is incompatible. Painfully so for the women, and especially in your case. The Earth Experiment was an abject failure, and your comrades elected to return to Mars. You decided you were having too much fun with easy Earth girls not to stay. Idiot. A move you’ve regretted since that one “rape” that left you sans penis. That purple-eyed cunt. Who knew Earth women could even do that with their vaginas? Just bite a penis right off. Fucking freaks.
You have a horrible niggling feeling you do your best to quell over and over: your mutilation is permanent. You’ll never be a real man again. Your worth on Mars is determined by your lifelong production of progeny or lack thereof. And if you are forever this way, castrated and useless, the only other option is death. You have no plans to die on this toilet of a planet. It’s Mars or bust. And the one incident aside, you don’t bust easy.
1:50 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital
I
n the fourth floor hallway, Detective Günn can’t contain her annoyance at how the wolf girl’s interview had gone. Red Feather is oblivious as per usual.
“That was strange,” Red Feather says, thinking about how drawn he was to, Lisa Wolverton, aka Trip.
“What? The fact that you were openly flirting with a witness? On camera no less? Cuz, yeah, I found that pretty fucking weird myself.”
Red Feather finally realizes she’s furious. “The hell are you talking about?”
Günn imitates him with a contorted face, “‘So, where’re you from Lisa? Oh yeah I’m Lakota, I did peyote once.’ Pathetic.” What she really wants to call him is asshole. “I’m going for a smoke. Don’t you dare follow me.” She spins on her heels and stomps away.
“Jeez-us,” Red Feather mutters. “The hell is up with her?” Red Feather goes to check on the bird girl, who’s finished her written statement and gone through four bags of gummy worms. Red Feather knocks on her door and introduces himself. He hears a half chirp half “Come in” like a trill, and opens the door.
The bird girl still perches on top of the bathroom door as if it were a swing in a cage. She smiles and titters at Red Feather.
“How’re you doing?”
She flies down and grabs the pen and paper. She writes:
“Good! I’m very full! And my words are sort of starting to come back.”
She demonstrates by saying “Detective Red Feather” punctuated by a series of tweets and chirps.
“That’s great news.” Red Feather smiles. “Can I read what you wrote in the meantime?”
“Sure,” she says, in that half voice half birdsong. She hands him the legal pad.
“My name is Asha Kinsella. Before you ask me where I’m from because everyone does, my mom’s from LA and my dad’s Irish and Indian. I grew up between here and India, and a few other places, too. My raver name is Galactic Canary, do you think that might be why I’m sort of a bird now?”
Red Feather looks up and shrugs an,
I don’t know
. Asha sighs, indicates for him to keep reading.
“My friends and I had been planning to go to the party ever since the tickets went on sale. We went as Charlie’s Angels. Can you tell me if they are okay?”
Red Feather pulls the stack of Polaroids from his pocket and hands them to Asha, who flips through them quickly. Her eyes fill with tears as she shakes her head.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Asha.”
She scribbles a note on a notepad:
“I’m an only child. They were like sisters.”
She scribbles again:
“I do recognize her and him.”
She holds up the photos of the vampire Icarus Lazlo and Cherie Beauxden, the big-bosomed woman the detectives had yet to interview.
“Keep reading,” Asha chirpspeaks.
“The water at the party was free and it was poisoned. Some kind of hallucinogen, not sure which. My friends and I found a really cool portal and even though Cherry Thrush was nervous, Cerulean Amazon and I sort of bullied her into going through. We were separated, in a pink tunnel with red stuff dripping down the walls. Really warm and kind of gross, but oddly comforting at the same time. You aren’t going to believe what I tell you next.”
Red Feather looks up. “Try me.”
“We each popped out of something, like in The Goonies when they find the pirate ship. Only we were like Thumbelina, and we had just emerged from a woman’s vagina.”
She points to the photograph of Cherie Beauxden. “Her,” she chirpspeaks.
You could put Red Feather in a tutu and change his name to Ballerina and he’d not be as surprised as he is right now. He turns his wide eyes back to Asha’s narrative.
“There was a man with fangs snarling at us. I guess he was going down on her and he was pissed we interrupted. Or that we came out. He called us ‘shit’ and we got mad. We grew back to normal size in like two seconds. He tried to hurt my sisters and I and so we shot him down with fire. We have telekinesis, the three of us, we call ourselves The Firebirds. I told you you’d never believe me.”
“Asha, I believe you. And would
you
believe this almost isn’t even the weirdest story I’ve heard today?”
Holy shit. The vampire Icarus Lazlo really does drink menstrual blood. Color me flabbergasted. And Günn was right, he wasn’t telling them the whole story.
Red Feather returns to Asha’s neat scrawl.
“He writhed and burned and we just left him there. The woman was dressed as a Powerpuff Girl and we were all stoned and on E so she was our new best friend. Her name is Cherie. We decided to go back to the party, but on the way some random woman tried to rob us. She had very spicy skin, like habañero, she touched me and said we had till the count of three to give her our money. Cerulean, Cherry and I did our fire thing and she was down. What a bitch! Oh, and I’m really sorry. Are you gonna arrest me for murder?”
“No, Asha. Of course not.” Try to make a murder rap stick with the complete lack of evidence and a setup as nuts as this? Not in a million.
“We went back to the party and met some of Cherie’s friends. They were really cool chicks. One of them was a cyclops! I’d never seen anyone like that before. So cool. Then all of a sudden these hyena men came and tried to take the cyclops girl away. We fought with them and then they grabbed us too. Took us up a tower where an old man was waiting with this horrible iron maiden thing. Like in that Johnny Depp Sleepy Hollow movie. Oh my God, it was horrible. He wanted to drain the cyclops girl’s blood and drink it or something. I think he said something about living forever, but it was so crazy, with all the hyena men and the fighting, I could be wrong.”
Red Feather shows her the photo of Mr. Crane. “Is that the man you saw?”
She nods. “Asshole.” The chirpspeak is pure anger.
“One of the other Powerpuffs did something strange, and this pink stuff came from between her legs and grew really fast. It attacked the old man and started to eat him. Like the blob! It was nasty. But sort of cool too.”
She tried to scratch out the last part, but Red Feather can still read it.
“After we defeated the monsters, we decided to celebrate and go back to the party, even though it’d been a pretty weird night. Don’t forget, the water was spiked and we were all super high. Sorry! We come down from the tower and all the ravers are bleeding from their ears!!! Oh my God!!! Someone figured out it was from the music, so Cherry, Cerulean and I shot the speakers down. But there were more. The music wouldn’t stop!!! My head hurt SO bad!!! That Powerpuff girl, she did it again, that blob thing from between her legs and it ate the DJ, but we still couldn’t stop the music.
“Then there was this rumble, like we were in the belly of a dragon, and then a bright light, and then I woke up covered in ash and somehow I could fly and couldn’t speak English anymore. The End.”
Red Feather breathes. “What a story.”
“I knew you’d never believe me!” Asha, the galactic canary, chirpspeaks.
“I do, I do. The, um, blob story has been confirmed by other survivors, and we have the DJ in custody. Between you and me,” Red Feather feels an odd kinship with this girl, “he confessed to being one of the masterminds.”
“No way!” Asha exclaims.
“Way,” Red Feather says.
“Holy shit.”
Red Feather chuckles. “You can say that again. So, can you still make fire?”
Asha shrugs, focuses on the visitor chair, puts her hand out and concentrates. Her hands begin to smoke, but no fire.
“It must have been the power of the three of us together.” Asha sobs, overcome with grief. Fire drips out of her eyes and catches the sleeve of her gown.
“Holy mother!” Red Feather lunges for a glass of water, throws it on Asha.
“What just happened?” Asha chirpsqueaks, wiping off the tracks burned down her face.
“You just cried fire.” Red Feather wonders when he’ll be able to say he’s literally seen it all.
Asha is determined to reclaim her pyrokinesis. “I’m going to try again. Get the fire extinguisher.”
Red Feather complies.
At this point, why the heck not?
Asha focuses and tries to set the garbage can alight. Smoke issues from her fingertips, but still nothing.
“Maybe you need to be more emotional?”
Asha nods. “Could be. I used to have to be really mad to make flames. We all did. But I’m too tired to be angry right now.”
“Give it time, Asha.” Pause. “Can you remember what the girl who made the blob looked like?”
Asha looks through the Polaroids again, slowly this time. She pauses on a red-haired woman, freckles smattered across her face. “I think this could be her. She was dressed as the orange Powerpuff. For some reason, I remember she wasn’t wearing a wig.” The chirpspeak gets clearer and clearer.
“Thank you so much, Asha. Your words seem to be returning, bit by bit. I’m sure your power will, too.” Red Feather smiles. “When you’re back at one hundred percent would you mind if we could get your statement on video?”
“Sure thing,” Asha chirps. “Do you think I’ll still be able to fly when I get my words back?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.” Red Feather is thankful for the reprieve from Günn’s disbelief. This interview is almost fun.
“Bummer. But I guess I’d rather speak.” Asha smiles and pops another gummy worm into her mouth. “Could you get a message to my mom? She’s at an ashram in India. I’d hate her to worry in case someone watches the news. She knows I party.”
“Sure thing. Got her info?”
Asha hands Red Feather a fresh piece of paper marked with her careful script:
Norma Jeane Baker
Auroville
00 91 555 78792
The office of the ashram has a phone.
Red Feather’s brow furrows at the name. His eyes widen as the information computes. Forget about tutus and ballerinas, this is a horse of a different color.
“Norma Jeane Baker? As in
the
Norma Jeane? Marilyn—”
Asha puts her hand up, “Yes, but don’t call her that. Her name is Norma Jeane. Please give her the message. And give her my number here, too?” Her chirpspeak is getting clearer and clearer, must be the practicing.
“You got it. Galactic Canary.”
Daughter of Marilyn Freaking Monroe.
Red Feather winks at Asha, now seeing the resemblance past her mocha-toned skin. Asha smiles and the resemblance deepens.
“Can I get some more gummy worms? I just ate my last one.”
“I’ll tell the nurse. And I’ll be back to check on you later.”
Asha nods and flutters back up to her perch on the bathroom door, slowly swinging and chirpsinging
Crimson and Clover
.
Galactic Canary, aka Asha Kinsella, feels bad about lying to the nice detective, omitting the fact that she and her friends were at the party to sell the marijuana they grow, technically illegally.
But Asha’s guilt quickly fades as her grief crashes over in a tsunami of pain. She holds back the tears, not wanting to start another fire with her sadness.