Trouble in Paradise

Clarity came crashing in. She looked down at the wriggling fish, a jagged chunk missing from its flank. The mixture of briny seawater and oily flesh in her mouth made her gag. She spit and an unchewed bite of fish was expelled onto the sandy beach.

Her teeth felt…sharp? She reached her hands up to her mouth and something hard clacked on her teeth. She pulled her hand away and saw a six-inch long sickle of a claw attached to a smooth, slick, white palm.

Her hand.

The jump of her heart lifted her to her feet. Immediately she became aware of eyes on her. Yellow, slitted eyes all around. They gleamed in the sunlight and silence-broken only by waves crashing on the shore. In the distance, a ship sat askew in the shallow waters. Rusty and dead.

In her mind she screamed, “My God, what has happened to me?” Frantically, she scanned around, all about were those yellow-eyed creatures. Their mouths hung open in surprise, she could see rows of daggers in them. About five of these squatting, blue-green and slick aquatic monsters had their attention fixed on her. They all sported similar sickle-claws on each of their index fingers.

Jesus, she realized, she was one of them! Her legs gave out and she fell onto her back, instantly felt a pop in what must have been her leg, and a throbbing pain made her spring to her feet once more. Her legs must have been fine, she realized, and craned her neck around to see the appendage she had damaged was a broad tail, growing out of her lower back. Now on the verge of shock, her only instinct was to run into the forest that lay opposite the water’s edge.

Falling over herself, she sprinted awkwardly, slapping foliage out of her way; seeing now the backs of her hands and arms were blue-green and slick, just like those awful creatures.

As she made a mad dash deeper into God-knows-where, her mind grasped frantically at drops of memories.

Human. She was a human. She had never been anything but. Olivia. That was her name. Was it still? And her husband…Roderick. What could she remember? Roderick was missing his left ring finger-a result from a construction job accident- so he wore his wedding band on the right. And they had always wanted children…but decided against it when quarantine started. Quarantine? Why had there been a quarantine? Because of the Org.

THE ORG.

It came in torrents now…

“I want this on my desk by tomorrow,” Paul, her editor commanded cooly, she could hear papers being shuffled, writing, and shuffles again.

“Of course, boss. I’m thrilled to have cut my honeymoon short to cover this,” Olivia responded dryly.

“This is going to be something your grandkids read about. This new thing…they’re calling it the org. Something unseen before. You can bet every journal in the world has reporters flying in and booking interviews. And it’s happening right here at home in Atlanta. What luck! Jon usually covers this stuff, but he’s been sick since getting back from Venezuela -I bet he drank the water; he should know better than to do that by now-so I need you on this. Your interview with Dr. Parkers is scheduled for this afternoon at 5 O’clock. Oh, and congratulations.” As per usual, Paul was half-listening and had brushed over her sarcasm. That irritated her all the more.

She heard the soft beep of a smartphone hangup, and her lock screen flashed to life. Her in her beautiful white dress, Roderick looking stunning in his tux.

For a man who came home every day with dirt under his nails, he cleaned up nice. She wondered how dirty he was right about now, since he had decided to go into work with the honeymoon being off.

She thumbed her way through her images to the video her mother took of their wedding vows.

“I love you to the ends of the Earth," Rod had slipped his old phrase in, and, like a hypnotic trigger:

“And after?” she asked with a smile as she slipped his ring on his right finger.

***

She finally had to stop. Her heart was beating out of her chest, screaming from adrenaline, confusion and pain. She lay her hand on a palm tree as she hunched over to catch her breath.

Webbed fingers.

Her anxiety spiked again but she could run no further. The pain in her tail had grown, too, and she was cut and bruised from colliding with trees and stumbling through vines in her panic. A big gash had opened on her forearm and blood had streaked and smeared across it. She wiped the blood away-and to her shock-the wound was closing before her eyes. In a moment, it healed completely and a beetle-like growth began to appear. She tried to scratch it off, but she realized it was rock-hard.

Rapid adaptation.

Another memory came flooding back…

“It’s really unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” Dr. what’s-his-nuts was bloviating about this green blob in a jar. Somehow plant-like and yet totally different. “We may be looking at a new domain of life. As you’ve probably heard, we’ve taken to calling it ‘The Org’-short for organism (his condescension irksome)- as we’ve no other known way of classifying it. This specimen we extracted from the brain of a man who had recently travelled to the amazon on what we assume was an ayahuasca excursion.”

Olivia couldn’t believe she had missed her honeymoon for this. A ball of snot in a jar? She could have at least been covering the Hawk’s playoffs. When she had to declare her major for her basketball scholarship, she wished now she had gotten her degree in sports medicine. At any rate, she figured she had better get the info she came for, or it’d be her ass.

“And where is the unfortunate infectee now?” she asked.

“In a psych ward. His little hallucinogenic trip seems to have left him a bit scrambled. He was ranting that the Earth wanted us gone and we could all return to nature or perish. Last I saw him, he was screaming that we had taken his gift away. The only means of surviving the coming cleansing. Typical doomsday woo-woo psychosis.”

***

A shrill cry pierced the silence-that of a child and she felt a trickle cascade down her belly. Her eyes shot to the sensation; her breasts had begun to lactate, and she noticed now how swollen they felt.

Disgusted. She was so disgusted and violated. One of those hideous freaks must have slithered out of her. Tears and rage and bile welled up.

Then, a feeling of peace came over her.

What? Where had all that distress come from? She wasn’t being hunted, she had spit out a perfectly good meal.

The fish. Disgust again and she came to her senses. The wail was getting closer, and she could hear the rustling of footsteps. Those things were following her.

She would be damned if she was going be a broodmare for monsters.

Tearing away, she broke through to a clearing. She was high up above rocks and crashing waves now. This was it. This miserable little journey was over and she was going to end things her way.

The chasm below seemed to deepen as she looked down and one final memory trickled in…

Roderick stood on the roof of their twenty-story apartment building.

Ink-black clouds hung above his head; thunder crashed and shook the building. A freak storm had covered the south. In other parts of the world there were earthquakes and tsunamis. All out of nowhere. All at the same time.

She stared down at the streets below, once bustling, now always silent and uninhabited, save the occasional military patrol.

Olivia stood weeping, begging Roderick to come down.

“Roderick! Please!” she screamed and strained in the howling wind.

“Stay back! You can’t catch it, too!” he warned her.

She made a step towards him.

He took a step further out.

Then something strange. Through all the chaos, he got the most serene look on his face. His eyes darted to the edge and, as if surprised, he stepped down. Olivia began to run his way, but after a few steps he seemed to snap out of it and stepped back up to the edge.

“I'll die before I give this to you!"

Olivia froze. Her entire world stood on the precipice. The wind blasted them and in a few more seconds, it would surely drag him off the ledge with or without his consent.

“I love you to the ends of the Earth!” She shouted.

…

“And after?” He finally responded, his face now contorting in heartbreak.

“Let’s find out together.”

She held her hands out to him. There was a flash of lightning and the ring on his right hand glinted. He took both her hands and stepped down from the ledge to embrace her.

***

The crying grew closer. She began lactating again.

Why was she standing over this cliff? That was dangerous. She turned around and out of the green came someone she recognized.

Mate. Mate carried a crying babe.

Daughter. Mate handed daughter to her and grasped her hand, a shiny little ring shown brilliantly in the unclouded sun. Daughter began suckling.

Together.