I walked into a pole one sunny afternoon. It was the makings of me. Never saw the thing. One of them tall, slender, grey yokes that melt into the background if you’re not paying attention. I felt like it did something to me. Whether temporary or permanent, I wasn’t sure. But change was afoot. I could feel it. Could end up with a job by the end of the day, I reckoned. Which frightened the life out of me.
It happens fast.
First you refuse to eat anything with a face.
Milk, eggs, and cheese soon follow.
Anita envied the wind-chimes. Their moans taunted her as she knocked on the oak door. She needed to steady her breath, so she allowed herself to slump, back flat, against the frame of the house. She hadn’t made much progress when the door creaked open. Anita leapt off of the siding, but she didn’t see who she was expecting. “Sorry. I must have made a mistake. I—”
“I don’t care if you have to lie down in a fucking coffin like Edith Sitwell,” Beelzebub says. “Get me some pages!”
This is my agent speaking. His name is not really Beelzebub—that’s just how I have him listed in my phone contacts. He’s very professional and he’s never spoken to me like this before. It’s just that I’ve pushed him to the end of whatever tether good agents are connected to their writers by. OK seriously—that sentence I just wrote? That is nothing like my usual high-quality prose. But just now, something really bad is happening to me.
Out of all the 18,652 cosmic shapeshifters that had infiltrated the planet, Kymbyrlee was sure she was the only one who had yet to master walking. The thought came with predictable speed the moment she tripped on the sun-cracked pavement, her left heel hitting the pavement a little too hard. The connection sent a shock through her leg, compressing the rough skin of her foot painfully against bone. She caught herself with the other leg and avoided yet another scraped face, but she could feel her posture overcorrecting, becoming stiff and unnatural. She could feel the looks of passersby graze her, and couldn’t help imagining what they thought. She just wanted to get home.