An Anti Fairy Tale

 

“Get down here right now!” My father yelled from downstairs. I sighed. There always seemed to be something upsetting him. I sat up on my bed, knocking my ecom to the floor and scattering my books all over. Great. Now I’ll have to clean up, too. I glanced at my clock. 8:42 p.m. My football thumped to the floor and bounced into my computer monitor, sending it crashing off my desk. There was a muffled crack as the screen broke.

 

“Damn it!” I swore. Could this day get any worse? I’d broken up with my girlfriend earlier because she’d cheated on me with the quarterback. Adding insult to injury, the kid was a junior, while Alyssa and I are both Seniors. Plus, I hadn’t been feeling well since lunch, so I’d taken a nap when I got home and had slept in. Now I didn’t have enough time to do my homework.

 

“BOY! Get down here NOW!”

 

As I left my room, I could see my father standing at the bottom of the stairs with his face bright red with rage. He was literally steaming. That’s because my father is a fire elemental. Most people are exaggerating when they say this, but my father really does have a fiery temper. As I looked at him, I wondered how he could be such a successful car salesman. At 6’ 7”, and more than three hundred pounds of muscle, he’s an intimidating man. Adding in the fact that his name is Jon Savage, it’s amazing to me that people don’t run away from him in the street.

 

“What’s wrong, dad?” I asked. I’d have been worried about his temper if he wasn’t enraged nine nights out of ten. I turned and saw my mother standing at the door with her coat still on. Being a nurse, she usually gets home late, so seeing her get home at this time wasn’t unusual. What made me gulp was the sneering look of satisfaction on her face. Nowadays, she only smiled like that before a beating.

 

“I just got a call from Bill.” He stated. I groaned. Bill was Alyssa’s father and was a colleague of my dad at the sales lot.

 

“Bill told me that Alyssa came home crying because you broke up with her in front of the whole school.” He continued.

“Dad, that’s not what happened. Listen to me, it’s all a misunderstanding.” I pleaded.

 

“I DID NOT RAISE MY SON TO BE A LIAR AND A BULLY! I WILL NOT TOLERATE YOUR BULLSHIT IN THIS HOUSE!” My dad roared as he backhanded me across the face.

 

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE A REAL MAN WHO WAS RAISED TO TREAT WOMEN RIGHT! NOT A BACKSTABBING BULLY!" he smacked me again.

 

"Dad, stop hitting me!" I yelled. I grabbed his arm as he swung at me again and pushed him away. He spluttered and small fires started breaking out in his hair. I gulped. Now he was really pissed off. In one swift, practised motion, he slid off his belt swung it at me.

Now, before I continue, I should probably explain why my mother is so happy with the prospect of me getting a belting and why my father is so willing to hit me.

 

My name is Adam Savage. I’m an eighteen year old guy finishing up my last year at high school preparing myself to go to University. I could have gone to college on a football scholarship, but instead I’m going to university to learn how to be a special effects technician.

 

Five years ago, I lived in the perfect family. My father Jon was a proffessional football player. My mother Diane was his trophy wife who worked as a nurse. She did it because she enjoyed helping people, not becuase of the money. Me and my brother Danny were the idolized sons and star football players. They said we would both join the NFL and follow in our fathers fottsteps. We were rich and lived in a huge house. Everything was perfect. But peice by peice, everything started to fall apart. First my father got dropped back to second line. Then third line. Things started, almost imperceptibly get colder in our house. We said we loved each other less often. We spent less quality time with each other. Then we talked less. It was always less, but it seemed like we would pull through as a family.

 

Four years ago any hope of that happening came crashing down. Danny came down with MORFs and died. The doctors said that he had an incomplete hybridization with a blowfish. I was there when it happened, too. He was strapped into a hospital gurney to keep him from hurting himself. He was thrashing about because the neuro toxins were causing him to have violent seizures. I remember Danny's skin was covered in spines and slime, and his body attempted to inflate. It was horrible. He exploded. Peices of my brother's mutated body went flying around the room. One of the spines was shot into my father’s leg and infected him. This ended his football career, because his leg never healed right. My mother had to start taking double and triple shifts at the hospital in order for us to have enough money to keep our lifestyle. As it was, we had to move from our six bedroom, high end Victorian house in the rich neighbourhood to a two bedroom tiny little house in the suburbs.

 

My father was ruined. His career in the NFL was over, his youngest son was dead, and he was suddenly middle-class after being rich for ten years. He took this the way most middle-aged men would. He started drinking, he started yelling, and he started hitting. My peaceful, fun loving father transformed, in a matter of months, into a callous, bitter husk of a man.

 

My mother, on the other hand, suddenly transformed from being the stereotypical trophy wife to being a hateful, spiteful woman who blamed me, of all people, for the death of her child. She always thought that I was never ‘manly’ enough (even though I’m 6’2”, weigh 200 pounds, work out regularly, and I’m the defensive tackler on my high school football team). When my father was crippled, she stopped looking up to him, and became a cynical, sarcastic, sometimes cruel woman.

 

I climbed back up the stairs, to my room, wincing at the pain in my ribs. I hoped my father hadn’t busted them. The last game of the season was in less than a week. Suddenly my head went fuzzy and I just made it into my room before I passed out.

 

 

I regained consciousness wondering why I felt like a fullback was sitting on my head. I groaned as a shaft of light struck my eyes like a spear. I lifted my head and gazed at my clock. It was 6:50 in the morning. I had to leave for school in twenty minutes. I got up off the floor and realized that I’d been sleeping in a pile of vomit. I ran to the bathroom and spent the next five minutes coughing up bile into the toilet. Geez. I usually only feel this bad when I get massively wasted. I hadn’t had anything to drink, though. I washed my face and staggered back into my room and got dressed. I turned to find my pants and came face to face with the picture of my inspirations. They hosted a show back in the 2000’s called Mythbusters, a show about disproving myths using a lot of special effects techniques. The picture showed the five hosts standing around a crash test dummy that they used for the tests too dangerous for real people.

 

“Don’t look at me like this.” I said as I put my hand over the picture. I loved the Mythbusters. I even shared the same name as one of the hosts. It was ironic, because my dad had named me, and he’d never heard of the Mythbusters.

 

I pulled myself together in front of my door. I couldn’t afford to miss practice today. I hopped down the stairs and poured myself a cup of coffee and a handful of aspirin. I wasn’t hung over, but I felt it. At least my mom’s still considerate enough to leave coffee for me and my dad when she leaves for work.

 

“Thank god dad doesn’t get up until 9.” I breathed as I sipped my coffee, praying I could keep it down. As most things go, hot coffee isn’t the best thing to throw up. It ranks right below coke in the realm of ‘oh god it burns’.

 

I grabbed my bag and headed out the door. I didn’t think I was clear-headed enough to drive, and judging by the current state of my computer (broken), I wasn’t about to risk my car. As it was, I made it to the school with five minutes to spare.

 

“Yo Adam, what’s up?” called my best friend Greg. I gave him a dirty look. He’s a scrawny nerd that couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. I know this because I once dumped him the trash behind the school when we were both freshman. I used to pick on him because he was too smart for his own good. That ended when he cornered me in the gym with his friends and beat the crap out of me. He told me later that he might be small but he wasn’t helpless. I’m weird that way, but I respected him for it. Anyway, we’re good friends now. He’s creepy smart. He doesn’t lord it over other people the way he used to, but he’s going to Harvard next year to study advanced physics. That has to mean something.

 

He went through MORFs a year back, and got the most unspectacular case I’d ever seen. He got no visible changes, and the only ‘power’ he got was the inability to gain weight. The more he eats, the faster his metabolism works.

 

“You feeling okay?” he asked me. “You don’t look so well.” I shook my head.

 

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t miss practice today. Coach will rip me a new one.” I nodded to him and entered my classroom. I mostly tried to keep my head down and not throw up.

 

Finally, classes ended, and I donned my football gear and practice started. I managed to throw in a good few tackles, but my head just wasn’t in the game. This was unfortunate, because I got tackled from behind, tripped over Keith, the quarterback, and landed flat on my back.

 

“Ahh!” I grunted in pain and vomited all over the inside of my helmet.

 

Coach came running onto the field, blowing his whistle.

 

“Savage! What was that!? What are doing out here… Oh, gross. Go to the showers, Savage. You’re out!”

 

I staggered to my feet and lurched into the change rooms. I emptied my guts into every trash can I passed. I stripped off my gear and stood naked under the shower. I lurched to the side as another wave of nausea swept over me. Suddenly, I lost my footing and slipped on the watery floor, landing on the back of my head.

 

“Adam? Adam can you hear me?”

 

I groaned. For the second time today, I woke up with a splitting headache. “What do you want?” I mumbled.

 

“Adam, you need to wake up. The nurse says it’s not safe for you to fall asleep again.”

 

“Huh?” I opened my eyes. Greg was standing over me with a worried look on his face. I appeared to be in the school nurse’s office.

 

“What happened? And where are my clothes?” I asked. I had my towel wrapped around my crotch, but nothing else. Greg grimaced.

 

“Dude, next time you fall down and hit your head, do it after you get dressed, not while you’re still in the shower. I could barely get you in here. There was no way I was putting your clothes on too.”

 

“You have a moderate concussion.” the nurse said. “You should go see your family doctor for an x-ray. There could be hairline fractures around your skull.”

 

“But I’m not balding.” I mumbled. Greg laughed. The nurse scowled at him.

 

“You shouldn’t laugh.” She scolded. “Your friend sounds confused. He might have brain damage. What’s funny about that?”

 

“The fact that he’s cracking dumb jokes at a time like this tells me he doesn’t have brain damage. At least not from hitting his head.”

 

Greg handed me my clothes and he and the nurse stepped outside. Once I got my clothes back on, Greg supported me up and half dragged me to his car.

 

“I’m taking you the doctor. Don’t fall asleep. If you do, you might not wake up. I’ll put on the radio to keep you awake.” He reached for the controls.

 

“NO!” I snapped. “I have a raging headache. I won’t sleep. I promise. But no radio.”

 

“All right man. Just keep yourself together. Your father would kill me if I don’t deliver you back home in one piece.”

 

The rest of the trip I spent in a foggy daze. In what seemed like no time at all, we arrived at the walk-in-clinic. Greg tried to hoist me out of the car twice before he must’ve realised there was no way he could carry me inside. I just could not get up. Greg ran into the clinic and came back outside with two nurses. At least I think they were nurses. I was very confused. Why did I feel so funny?

 

I scratched the back of my head and pulled my hand away bloody. Greg saw this and started shouting something at the nurses. I slipped off the seat and felt myself land on the street, but it felt like I was feeling everything from a distance, like it was happening to someone else.

 

“Get up Adam! Get up!” I looked over at Greg. He was pulling on my arm. Why was he so upset? His face waved in front of me. I giggled and waved back.

 

I don’t remember much of what happened at the doctor’s. The next thing I could remember was getting home. I was really confused, and my head hurt. I turned to Greg. He looked really nervous. His hands were shaking on the steering wheel.

 

“What happened?” I asked him. He turned his head slowly and gave me a worried look.

 

“You don’t remember?” I shook my head. A stab of pain shot through my head and I grabbed it in both hands. I screamed as another bolt of white lightning raced behind my eyes. I felt bandages wrapped around my head.

 

“Put your hands down!” Greg looked terrified. “Leave the bandages alone. You banged yourself up pretty good, but if you leave the bandages alone, you should be fine.”

 

“Okay. But what happened.” I asked. My head felt a lot clearer, but I was still confused.

 

“You have MORFS, man. I’m taking you home.” He opened his car door and came around to my side.

 

“Come on, let’s get you into bed.” He threw my arm over his shoulder and walked me into the house.

 

He handed me a bottle. “Drink this. It’ll help with your headache.”

 

I gulped it down as best as I could. It tasted terrible, but I barely noticed.

 

I lowered myself on the bed, and was out cold before Greg even left the room.

 

I woke up sometime later with a pressing need to use the bathroom. I got up and did my business, then went back to bed. I saw another bottle on my desk with a note on it saying ‘Drink me!’. There was about 7 or 8 bottles. I grabbed one and chugged it, then went back to sleep.

 

The next few days flew by me in a daze. At some point I realised I was getting smaller.

 

I woke up on what was probably the fifth day and was pleasantly surprised to no longer have any headache. I got up to use the washroom and the bandages fell off my head. I ran to the washroom and for the first time, looked in the mirror.

 

I looked completely different. I had to be at least two feet shorter already, I had red hair falling to just beneath my ears, and I looked really strange. My eyebrows were thinner and arched up, my nose was different somehow, and my lips looked thicker. I sighed and went back to bed. There was nothing I could do about it, and I was still changing.

 

I used the washroom and went back to bed. I gulped down the last of the energy drinks and passed out.

 

The next time I woke up, I realized I was finished changing. I felt good. In fact, I felt great. I didn’t hurt anywhere! I sat up and looked around. Everything was way too big.

 

“I know I was getting shorter, but this is too much.” I said and gasped at the sound of my voice. I sounded wrong. I sounded light. I sounded female.

 

I ran to the washroom but was frustrated by the fact that I was now too short too see the mirror. I grabbed the drawer and started to climb onto the counter. Then I noticed my hand. My hand was tiny, smooth, slender, and my nails were long. I hand a woman’s hand. Frantically, I grabbed my chest and crotch.

 

“Oh shit!” I screamed. “I have breasts! I have a vagina! I have… wings?” I turned my head and saw a reddish, glittering, wing gently waving back and forth in and out of my field of vision. I grabbed it and felt the mutual touch. I threw it back and fell to the ground, sobbing and hyperventilating.

 

As I fell down, a whole cloud of reddish hair went flying over my face. I grabbed it and gave it a sharp tug. I felt my scalp pull forward, but it didn’t hurt. I pinched my arm as hard as I could, digging my new nails in. Not only did it not hurt, but I didn’t wake up either.

 

There was a knocking on my door. “Adam? Are you awake?” It was my mother. Oh god! I can’t let her see me like this. I threw myself under my bed just as the door opened and my mother came into the room. She took a few steps in and looked around, confused.

 

“Adam? Where are you?” she asked.

 

“Don’t freak out mom. I’m coming out.” I repeated and I crawled out from under the bed. Her hands flew to her mouth and she got down on her knees beside me. Her eyes were tearing up already.

 

“Oh honey, I’m sorry.” She cried. Then she did the last I would have ever suspected from her. She gathered me up in her arms and hugged me. I was astonished. She hadn’t hugged me since I broke my leg playing football with my dad when I was six.

 

“My poor baby. My poor baby.” She whispered into my ear as she rocked me back and forth. I was dumbfounded. She never showed me this much attention. Before I could wonder why she was getting so emotional, she sat up and held me at arms distance. I numbly noticed that her hands, though small, completely encircled my upper arms.

 

“Let’s have a look at you.” She said, and she picked me up. I screamed in surprise. She walked with me into the washroom and put me down on the counter. I stared into the mirror with my jaw hanging open. I saw a tiny little girl staring back at me.

 

“No way.” I gasped. “There is no way that that is me!” I stared at the top and went down.

 

She had red hair going to her shoulders. She had a small round face, with big plump lips and wide green eyes. She had a cute nose. She had very narrow shoulders that lead to very thin arms. She had two small breasts. She had a flat stomach. I gulped. She even had a reddish patch of pubic hair above a slit that could only be one thing. I hurriedly looked past that at her legs. They were long, smooth, and tiny. Everything about her was tiny. Judging by mom, she wasn’t even three feet tall.

 

I looked down. Small breasts, flat stomach, vagina. I squeezed my eyes shut and started to cry again. My mother’s hands closed on my arms and gently turned me halfway. I opened my eyes again.

 

“Look at your back.” My mother told me. I turned my head and glanced over my shoulder at the mirror. I had two pairs of reddish wings coming out of my back. The first pair came out just below my shoulder blades and angled slightly upwards. The other pair came out of the small of my back and angled down, ending just above my knees. They slowly moved open and closed, completely independent of me wanting to move them. They looked just like a butterfly’s. They even had a swirling orangish pattern flowing down them.

 

“I’m a freak. I’m a girl, and I’m a freak.” I whispered. Tears were pouring down my face and I was beyond caring. I wasn’t a man anymore. I wasn’t even a human anymore.

 

“Shush. Don’t call yourself that.” My mother said. She pulled me close to her and hugged me again.

 

“Mom! You’re crushing me.” I said. My face was pushed against her, so my voice came out muffled.

 

She put me down on the floor and walked to the door. “I’ll be right back honey. You just calm down and I’ll be back to take care of you.” She closed the door behind her and I was left with freakishly weird new body.

 

I spent the next ten minutes exploring myself. There was a knock on the door and my mother came back in with a small sweater in her hands. She handed it to me.

 

“What’s this for?” I asked her.

 

“Well, you’re naked, and somehow, I don’t think any of my clothes will fit you.”

 

I pulled it over my head and there was a loud ripping sound. I glanced over my back and saw all four of my wings jutting stiffly through the fabric. I was thoroughly embarrassed by the fact that it went past my knees, and my arms didn’t even come close to the end of the sleeves, even with the back tenting out on my wings. I looked at the sweater and frowned.

 

“Mom, who’s sweater is this? It’s not mine, it’s way too small.”

 

My mother frowned a bit as she said, “It was Daniels’. I have a box of his old clothes in the attic. Don’t tell your father, you know how he gets when I mention your brothers name. Come on.”

 

“Where are we going?” I asked her. It was the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn’t like she was going to try to send me to school.

 

“You need new clothes, dear, and we’re going to get them.” She opened the door and pulled me out.

 

“Mom, it’s late November! If I go outside wearing nothing but a sweater, I’m going to freeze!” I protested.

 

I was about to say more when I saw my father standing at the other end of the hallway. He looked at me and the strangest thing happened to him. For my whole life, as long as I can remember, my father has always been a big, strong, confident man. But as I watched him look down at me, he seemed to sag slightly, and all of a sudden he seemed small. It was the strangest thing. Then the corner of his mouth bent into a little frown and he whispered, almost to himself. “My son is dead. I have no sons.” A tear leaked from his eye as he opened the door and left the hall.

 

My legs went weak and I fell to my knees. I was completely thrown. I couldn’t believe my ears. I broke out into sobs. How could he say that? I totally lost it and fell down to the floor crying my eyes out.

 

I felt my mother’s hands pick me up and set me back on my feet. I turned around and hugged her tightly around the middle. In the back of my head, a voice said it should be weird that I was hugging her at all, let alone the fact that my head only came up to her stomach.

 

“There, there.” She said. I wept like a baby into her shirt. I was devastated. How could my father, the man I’ve looked up to for so long, abandon me?

 

I bawled into her shirt for a good ten minutes, then my mother gently started me walking towards the door. I sniffed and wiped my face with my hands, feeling very much like a little kid. My mother helped me get into the van, because with my newer, shorter legs, I just couldn’t quite manage it.

 

She got behind the wheel and started the car. As she pulled it out of the driveway, and started down the street, it finally dawned on me why this entire turn of events had me so thoroughly spooked. My mother hadn’t been this kind to me since, well, since ever. I turned to her.

 

“Mom.” I began. She must have interpreted my tone or something, because tears started coming to her eyes.

 

“Adam, I know I’ve been a terrible mother. I was hard to you all your life. I’m so sorry. There’s nothing I can do to make that time up.” The tears started flowing freely now. I sat back, shocked.

 

I never treated either of my sons right, and now I don’t have any sons.” She smiled through the tears. “But I still have you. I may not have any sons any more, but I now have a beautiful daughter.”

 

While I was still shocked a little, I leaned over and hugged her as tightly as I could while she was driving.

 

I think she was a little shocked at this, but she smiled, and gave me a one-handed hug back, while keeping her eyes on the road.

 

“I love you mom.” I said quietly. My mother didn’t respond. I guess she didn’t hear me.

 

 

We pulled up to the mall and my mother helped me get out of the car. I nervously kept the hem of my shirt down, cause I didn’t want to be seen. I was naked under the shirt, after all.

 

I had an embarrassing trip from the car to the mall doors. It was so cold, I started to shake, and my nipples hardened like little diamonds. I was so embarrassed! I almost turned around and went back to the car, but my mother pushed me inside and I started to warm up.

 

She steered me towards the children’s clothing store and I balked.

 

“Mom, I can’t get my clothes there! I’m not a child! I’m eighteen years old!”

 

My mother shushed me. “But you’re too small for eighteen year old clothes. But I suppose you will need some proper underwear first.”

 

She lead me back out of the store and led me to the lingerie store. I started to panic at this.

 

“Nonononononono!” I squealed. Ignoring me completely, she marched me up to the nearest saleslady and planted me in front of her. It was quite embarrassing to me that in spite of being an obviously young girl, she was more than a full foot taller than me.

 

“My daughter here has just gone through MORFS, as you can see, and she needs to be measured for a bra.” I almost shrieked again, but I managed to bite my tongue. The saleslady nodded and started looking me up and down. I felt my wings open and close again and again. It seemed they moved more when I was nervous. And boy was I ever!

 

“Alright, girl. You have to pull the top off if you want to be measured.” She acted as if wings were nothing unusual, and getting impatient, started to tug at the hem of my shirt.

 

“Wait!” I shrieked. “What?” the girl asked, annoyed. I looked around me. There was no one else in the store, but still I leaned up and whispered to her, “I’m naked under the top.”

 

Her eyes widened slightly, and she led me to the back room before helping me pull off the shirt.

 

My breasts bounced slightly as I pulled the fabric over them, and I couldn’t help but shiver as the fabric rubbed my nipples. They were a lot more sensitive than they used to be.

 

The sales girl gave me a weird look and stood with her hand on her hip for a moment. She shook her head and grabbed a tape measure. She then proceeded to give me the most embarrassing measuring of my entire life. She measured my breasts and back in more ways than I would have thought possible. She even wound the tape measure around the base of my wings and started measuring things back there.

 

Throughout the entire process, she continued giving me weird looks. Finally, it seemed she couldn’t take it any more. She turned to me and put her hand on her hip again.

 

“You haven’t been a girl for very long, have you?” she said. I shook my head. “When did you wake up?”

 

“About an hour ago.” I said quietly. She gaped. “And your mother is already getting you new clothes? Has she made you an appointment with the clinic yet?” I shrugged, which was accompanied by the weird sensation of my wings shifting.

 

She shrugged, too, and continued measuring me. Suddenly, she stopped and started writing something down on a pad.

 

“What are you writing?” I asked. “You’re measurements. You are an A cup and this is the measurements for your chest.” She showed me a bunch of numbers. I had no idea what they meant. She must have realised she’d lost me, because she turned and fetched my mother.

 

I could hear them talking as they entered the back room. The sales girl was telling my mother about my sizes. “She’s going to have to get her bras custom made. Her back is too small for most clasps. I can modify a couple for her to wear now, but these are the measurements for future bras.”

 

My mother took the note pad sheet from her and nodded thoughtfully. “How are you going to modify them, and will it be expensive?” she asked. The saleslady shook her head.

 

“It’s not going to cost you anything. I’m doing it for free, just remember to come here for the rest of the bras.” My mother smiled at this. She was obviously (to me) annoyed with having to ask about prices. The sales girl handed me a pair of panties, then picked up a bra and started working at it with a strange machine I hadn’t seen. I put it on, feeling like I was losing more and more of myself every minute.

 

I sat around for fifteen minutes while the sales girl wrestled around with the odd contraption. She handed me the bra, and I just stared at it. It had been cut apart and sewn back together in an unidentifiable pattern, and it had two sets of clasps at the back. I looked up at my mother hopelessly.

 

“How the hell do I put this thing on?” I moaned. She shook her head and helped me put the bra on, adjust the thin straps so they wouldn’t be in the way of my wings, and firmly set the clasps.

 

“There.” She said, stepping back. “Now take a look.” She turned me around to look at the mirror behind me that I had been very pointedly ignoring until now. I saw a very pretty, very tiny girl standing there in a pair of panties and a small bra. I almost stared crying again, but I managed to hold it back. I took a deep breath and turned to my mother.

 

“It’s…….nice.” I managed. She gave a small smile and thanked the sales girl. She picked out a couple more panties and one more custom altered bra, then went to the front to pay for them.

 

“Wait here.” She said to me.

 

“What? Why?” I started to ask, but she’d already left the store. I stood there awkwardly in a bra and panties and nothing else. My wings started to swish back and forth, faster and faster.

 

“So, MORFS, huh? That sucks.” The sales girl said. I nodded glumly. My wings started to go even faster.

 

“What are you doing? Trying to fly?” the girl quipped. I shook my head and tried to make them stop flapping.

 

“I can’t control them yet.” I said.

 

In the silence, the only sounds that could be heard was the terrible music on the loudspeakers outside, and the rapid swish swish of my wings flapping.

 

I stated to get really nervous, and all of a sudden, my wings stopped flapping in and out, and started flapping up and down. I was roughly jerked off my feet and remained, hovering, three feet up. Needless to say, it scared the crap out of me. I screamed and started clutching at the air in terror.

 

The sales girl was also quite shocked and ran up to me and tried to pull me back to the ground. She pulled me halfway, when my wings started flapping harder, all on their own, and I was jerked out of her grasp so quickly, I jammed my head into the ceiling and fell back to the ground in a heap.

 

My ankle was bleeding where the sales girl’s fingernail had scraped me, and my forehead was bleeding from the ceiling tiles. I stayed lying on the floor and cried. It just kept flowing and flowing. I was vaguely aware of the sales girl trying to comfort me, when my mother came back into the store.

 

“What happened?!” she cried out. She rushed over to me and helped me off the floor. She glared at the sales girl. “I told you to watch out for her!”

 

The sales girl apologized. “I’m sorry, Ma’am. Your daughter started to fly, she panicked, so I tried to help her down, and she flew up into the ceiling. I’m sorry.”

 

My mother calmed down a little. “Alright.” She said to no one in particular. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out slowly. She stood up. She turned to me and handed me a bag from the children’s clothing store.

 

“Go to the change room, honey, and put this on.”

 

I took the bag and closed the door behind me. What was inside? I wondered. I reached into the bag and pulled out a small pair of jeans. I checked the tag. They were little girl’s jeans. I shrugged and put them on. They fit well enough, and they were kind of comfortable. I reached into the bag and pulled out another cloth-like object.

 

“What is this?” I asked out loud. “It’s a halter top, dear, put your arms through the straps, and tie it off at the neck.”

 

“Oh.”

 

I figured it out and with some difficulty, put it on. My back was fairly cold, but I couldn’t cover it up any more because of my wings.

 

“Come on out, and let’s take a look.” My mother called. I opened the door and walked out.

 

She gasped when she saw me and made me turn to the mirror. I had to admit, the girl staring back at me looked very cute. She wasn’t all that pretty, but she was very cute. She looked like she was 12 or 13, though. I was a little depressed by that.

 

I sighed, and my mother asked me what was wrong?

 

“I look cute.” I said. I looked cute. I was supposed to be an eighteen year old guy training for the big football game, not this little girl with wings!

 

“I’m a bug girl.” I commented. As I said this, I noticed I had two strands of black hair standing almost straight up from the peak of my hair. I licked my hand and tried to smooth them down, but when I touched them, it was like a zap from static. The two hairs jumped, and I felt…weird. I suddenly realised what they were.

 

“I have antennae?!” I shrieked. I touched them again and felt another zap through me. I fell to my butt in shock. It was a much shorter fall than it used to be. My mother leant forward and hugged me. She wiped my forehead with a damp cloth (where did she pull that from? I wondered.) and wiped the blood off my head.

 

“It’s okay honey. It’ll be alright.”

 

She rocked me back and forth until I was done crying.

 

When I was feeling better, I got up, and me and my mother left the store. I waved goodbye to the sales girl, who seemed a little perturbed as we left. We got back in the car and my mother turned to me as we got inside.

 

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

 

It was getting late, and I was starving. I told her so, and she smiled and started driving. I looked up at the sky and watched the sunset.

 

We were pulling into the parking lot at some burger joint when there was a sudden jerk, and the car was knocked to the side. My mother screamed as the big black jeep slammed into the side of our van and flipped it over. I slipped through my seatbelt and was thrown from the vehicle.

 

My mother was crawling out of the window of the upside down van as the jeep rammed it again, knocking it to the side.

 

“What’s happening, mom?!” I screamed. I turned around this way and that, but I lost sight of her.

 

The jeep parked and five or six big men came out. They were all wielding weapons. Three had baseball bats, one held a big combat knife, one had a hunting rifle, and one was carrying a sledgehammer. They moved into a circle around me.

 

“What do you want?!” I screamed at them. They didn’t say a word. They were all wearing dark clothes, maybe leather. I couldn’t tell. All the lights in the parking lot were out, so it was too dark to see them clearly. They started to close in and I started screaming.

 

“Mom, help me! Help me mom! Where are you!” I started to cry again. The man with the hunting rifle raised it and pointed it at my face.

 

“Don’t move.” He said. I froze, and stood there trembling. I looked at each of the men that I could see without turning around. I couldn't make out any specific details in their faces, but that didn't matter. I'd never seen any of them before in my life. The guy with the rifle whispered something to the guy on hir right, who was weilding the big knife. He whispered something to the guy on his right, and I turned my head to follow the movement. I started to turn, when the man with thre rifle barked out at me.

 

"Get down on your knees, facing me." I immediately dropped to my knees. I barely noticed the tears running down my face. "Where's my mom?" I choked out. she had to have made it out ok. She had to. I had never been as terrified in my life. The guy with the sledgehammer walked around me from behind and stood next the man with the rifle. The man raised the gun again and pointed it at my forehead. I flinched, and a couple of them laughed softly. I suddenly realised the guy with the sedgehammer no longer had the sledgehammer. At the exact moment I realised this, al the men ooked above and behind me, and I heard a step, then a grunt of exertion. Involuntarily, I started to turn, and the sledgehammer hit the back of my head. The world exploded. I felt my skull shatter, and everything went black.