Unlikely

“I tell you the prophesy is pure hokum. Lies wrapped in a thin veneer of desperation and wild imagination. It is no true prophesy but wishful thinking on the part of some disillusioned sixteenth century monk.” I cry as I pace Iz’s small but well stocked library. I’d woken sometime around midnight, alone in that alley, with a terrific headache and a small chunk of rubbery, bloody flesh still in my mouth. Revolting.

“He couldn’t have found you by accident. You were living in the bowels of the city. It’s a maze down here as you well know. He had to have been looking for you specifically.” Iz sits by his elegant fireplace. It is modest in size but crafted from fine Italian marble. Carved from solid green and white veined stone, a stag flees from dogs the size of horses and exotic birds perch high in the trees observing the chase. An odd hunting scene now that I reflect on it. Iz is relaxed in his antique smoking jacket of cranberry colored velvet, his feet propped up on a tufted leather stool. Gold wire framed glasses are perched delicately on his aquiline nose, making him appear more scholarly than crafty. Iz has no use for society or people in general but he covets all the elegant trappings.

“How do we even know he was a real monk and not some lunatic on a mission for his friends from Mars?” We have been over all this before, Iz and I. He is the only one I have shared the prophesy with, more from embarrassment than anything else. “He could think I’m John Carter, getting ready to save the Princess!” I am geared up but Iz waves me to silence.

“To end the endless wars, seek the one with eyes of light. The one of death born will grant the innocents their fate. Only through true sacrifice will peace be bought.” I grab my glass of red wine, wishing, as I gulp it down, that it resembled the color of blood a little less. I come up for air, “I know what is written on that supposedly ancient scroll, I am not protesting it’s existence, just the mistake of its being about me.” I let the heat from the wine, and Iz has an excellent palette, burn away the last vestige of coppery sweetness from my mouth. I am still trying to come to grips with the idea that I’ve bitten someone, tasted human flesh. I’m vegan for cripes sake!

“I am a monster, not some hero destined to save the world! What rot! I was an animal, just as likely to turn on the victim as that Separatist twit. I was driven by my senses, overwhelmed by them, enslaved….”

“Yes, yes. The sight of the full moon brought out your inner animal.” Iz scoffs. “Why, you took a bite out of crime! Put an end to his misdeeds!”

“Are you quite done?” I am regretting telling him that I’d bitten the man on the butt.

Iz’s eyes glint with evil humor, his glasses giving him a wizardly look. He actually is a bit of a wizard. He’d created my new identity after I been declared legally dead. Very helpful. Hard to get a job when you are dead.

“Fine, fine.” He waves his glass about, nearly loosing a drop as the cranberry red liquid sloshes up the side. “You’ve clearly got a new manifestation. Let’s focus on that for now. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask, why did you show up wearing trash?”

I sigh. This evening was giving him fodder for weeks worth of entertainment. I will never hear the end of it I am sure.

“My clothes were shredded to bits from the change and there wasn’t a convenient clothing store open at midnight.” I return to my chair furthest from the fire. The warmth is welcome but it would only dry my scales even more and I still haven’t made it to the pool. I itched everywhere. I rubbed the back of my head where the victim nailed me with a piece of iron pipe. Guess I’d freaked her out more than the guy with the symbolic brands down his arms.

“Mmm, yes. So, plastic bags and a couple of cardboard boxes. Cheers!” Iz smiles and sips his wine. “Ah. Chateau Margaux! You beautiful, mysterious thing!”

“Where do you get this stuff anyway?” Iz didn’t work that I knew of. Not in the sense that I did, a nine-to-five gig entering endless data for a faceless corporation. Yet he always had the very best of everything. If I had any money I would wager that the wine I am currently drinking costs more than I’d made in years. Possibly all of them combined.

“Oh, here, there.” He waves his hand as though batting away a fly. “Back to you. Was there a moment, even a very small one where you might have been able to control what was happening to you?”

“No. It happened too fast. There was too much pain, too much input, it was all just…” I picked at an imaginary bit of cat hair. Iz didn’t have cats. Yet. I’d been working on him though.

“I don’t think you are giving this enough introspection. When you change into your other form you do not loose yourself,” he taps his head for emphasis, “up here. You have control, you control the process. Logically, it must be the same with this new form.”

I understand what he is saying and it makes sense. I’d done it before so I could do it again. This time, though, I had been unprepared, off kilter from crashing my bike, and the pain had been so much worse. In water everything went much more smoothly. Sure there was some pain but not the rending, splitting….

“I’ll think on it.” I concede, not wanting to dwell on it.

“Excellent. So, the monk I traced to a monastery in Old Greece, what we now call New Gryole. A splinter group from the Monastery of Saint Nicholas of Anapafsas, the saint of Rest if I have the translation right. They were ordered to keep the prophesy safe and when the signs had been made manifest, to go out into the world. It burned down thirty three years ago and the surviving monks were dispersed with one goal.”

“Let me guess. Find the One.”

“Yes, he’s the real deal.”

I wake in a dry sweat, heat steaming off my body as though I’d been baked. It is always the same, the dream, a minds-eye recording of the event that’d landed me here, the ‘accident’. I hate to think on it, hate to remember that time but the dream forces itself in my rem sleep. I absently pat one of the cats as the dream’s memories slowly fade, the only memories I have of my past life. I hadn’t had a bicycle back then. I’d always taken the subway. I’d been late for work and hurrying down the stairs, irritated by the strong flow of people going the opposite direction. A more observant person might have wondered why everyone was leaving the station in such a rush. I’d heard the clang signaling the doors were about to close and rushed forward, threading the closing doors and slamming into a seat triumphant. I was breathless, panting from effort and mighty proud of my achievement. I’d just made it! I’d closed my eyes for a moment, waiting for the tram to start forward but it didn’t. Confusion picked my eyes open and, finally, I realized why everyone else had been in such a hurry to get away.

The gunman stood staring at me open mouthed, his gun pointed at my torso. He also held a large metal briefcase with a heavy chain linking his wrist to the handle. His features were wide and flat with eyebrows currently raised nearly to the hairline.

“Wha…?” I’d gotten out before he shot me. Fortunately, I had been clutching my own briefcase and the bullet never reached my body. I leapt to my feet, shocked, and clawed at the closed door but it refused to budge. The train lurched and another shot missed me. I stumbled and sprawled, swinging my briefcase like a weapon. It connected with the gunman’s shins and he cried out, falling as the train lurched yet again. We struggled, the gun went off a few more times and I remember a searing pain. Mostly I just remember us wailing on each other with our briefcases as he tried to get a bead on me. It would have been hysterical if it hadn’t been so deadly.

Suddenly, his briefcase broke open and a swarm of multi-colored glass beads rolled out, each about the size of an eyeball. I happened to be standing then and the glass beads were like marbles under my feet. I threw my arms wide, trying to keep my balance, wondering why I wasn’t being shot at when I noticed his look of horror. I glanced down, followed his eyes and saw the bead directly under my foot start to crack.

The gunman dropped his weapon and now he was trying to get away from me. Time slowed as one by one I watched the falling beads crack and open. A haze of vapor enveloped the train’s cab and by now we were both lost in our respective hells. I remember great pain. I remember my skin sloughing away. I remember sticking to everything as I inched my way not toward the side door but to one of the end exits. Somehow I got away, but not without leaving behind enough genetic tissue to be declared legally dead. I woke much later, far below the train tunnels in a world termed by it’s residents as the Underside. Here I suffered and prayed for an end that wouldn’t come. I survived partly through sheer bullheadedness but mostly through the kindness of others. Iz found me and put the word out. I never needed for food or warmth but a conventional doctor was out of the question. Iz’s connections put two and two together, he knew I had come in contact with unknown substances that the government would only concede to be a mix of engineered genetic material. The man with the briefcase was thought to have been a possible terrorist, on his way to meet a buyer for the odd globes of glass containing the toxic elixir. How much of this was true and how much was made up by our government we’ll never know.

I am lucky I was declared dead. I avoided the unpleasant experience of an extended vacation with some obscure arm of our government as they tried to figure me out. Iz has been helping me ever since, trying to figure out what the substances were. He has narrowed the possibilities down to a soup of dna enhancement markers, a virus structured carrier and ‘other’. Well, it’s a start.

Mickey tugs my ear, her pointed teeth pressing lightly but intently. She’s had enough of my wallowing and wants food. Of the five she is the most demonstrative. She insists on a nightly brushing so her coat shines and could happily snuggle or play twenty-four hours a day. I stir and the fuzzy pile starts to separate and stretch. Backs need rubbing and I give a general morning kitty greeting to each one. We pad en-mass into the kitchen and I set out bowls of food. I refresh the water dishes (Tiny refuses to drink out of anything but a lightly chipped blue and white china tea cup I’d found at a flea market). I gulp down a gallon of salted water and set my grains to cook. I eat only grains and vegetables… which make the incident the night before all that more appalling. I don’t eat meat of any kind so tartare, especially the human variety, is definitely ‘off menu’.

I eat my breakfast in a contemplative mood. Today is Friday. I’ll need to leave early to catch the bus. After work I plan to find my bike, fix it, and get to the pool before heading back down to Iz’s place. Last night he’d given me a very official looking medical card that claims I have an incurable, non-transmittable disease called trophonios malthrope. Since my hat and fake hair were lost in the scuffle the night before, I suspected this card will come in handy sooner rather than later.

I make it to work with seconds to spare and do my best to look like I am working industriously. In fact, I am on autopilot, typing in data that makes no sense to me while I ponder the events of the previous night. Why had the change taken me over like it had? I had actually bitten that guy! Who knows what would have happened if the ungrateful victim hadn’t hit me so hard. Not that I sympathized with the Separatist punk. Anyone who thought that breaking our country into smaller territories was smart, or even some misguided idea of freedom, needed their head examined. Not to mention their cult-like brainwashing techniques.

“Mr.Friendly? Can I see you in my office please?”

“Mr.Friendly?!”

That was me! I keep forgetting the name Iz put on my ID card. My friends, the few I have, call me Rince after a character in a book we all love; Rincewind, Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. On my ID card, however, it says Bill, Bill Friendly. I grab my new medical card and head to the managers office.