Note from Piper: There is a brief scene with the aftermath of a vehicular death.
I turned the dial of the radio down a bit further, lowering the volume of the Missing Persons song to which I had been grooving mere minutes before down to a whisper so that I could pay attention to my caller. It was a bit disappointing… Even though we looked nothing alike, I always felt that I had an affinity for lead singer Dale Bozzio and, at age thirteen, had spent a torturous six hours dying and straightening and teasing out my hair to imitate her fly-swept blonde mane for Halloween. Failed miserably, but the costume did allow me to encourage Paul Bowden to easily slide into second base with a little under-the-shirt action, so… there was that. “So you ran into Tara just outside the club,” I continued as I settled back in my seat, encouraging the woman – girl, really – at the other end to continue her story.
“So, like, she says, ‘Well, I don’t think you have a chance of winning,’” she continued, the slur in her voice apparent even over the vaguely staticky connection of the substandard cell service. “I mean, can you believe that little cunt?!?”
“Uh huh,” I mumbled absently as I stared out of the windshield at the occasional knots of traffic that flowed past me. Need to wash this thing, I mused as the young actress on the other end of the line droned on about whatever outrageous offense had been cast her way. Of course, I would need money to actually do THAT. The world around me was dark, but not dark – sort of a dark/light of a Los Angeles night that should have been pitch-black but was not because of the never-wavering lights of the city. The air felt caustic, almost burning my lungs with every breath and making my eyes water just a bit. I sniffed, wondered if my nose was going to run and ruin my makeup, and tried to keep the contempt out of my voice. “Well, she did do that date-rape story arc on Crissman High,” I pointed out, pretending as if I actually cared about any of this shit. “So what did you say?” I finally asked.
“Well,” she replied huffily, “I told her that it didn’t matter how many cocks she sucked, she was still a shitty actress.” She paused and over the pounding beat of the music I could hear her snorting a line, and when she came back she was even more animated and even more stoned. “I mean, sure, I sucked my share of cocks to get parts or just for shits, but really, I’m a way better actress that Little Miss Saggy Tits!!!”
Not for the first time I wondered just how the hell I had ended up here in the living nightmare that was my life, and tried to figure out just what I was going to do. What I should do. What I needed to do. I just don’t fucking know… I fought back the urge to sob, to completely break down and shriek at the spoiled, stoned actress on the phone and quit and run off and try to actually get the fuck away from this pointless, worthless, do-nothing existence and just… do… something…
My life had started out positively. Well, to be more accurate, it had been spectacular… After a soft childhood and an education that emphasized creativity far more than science and math, I had packed up all my belongings and moved to Hollywood, intent on becoming the next Molly Ringwald. I had the look – brilliant, brassy red hair, cool and sparkling green eyes, a flawless complexion that acne wouldn’t dare to even think about approaching, full breasts and curvy hips and a narrow waist, all in all what the boys called ‘the complete package.’ I had given up my virginity at fourteen (to the aforementioned Paul Bowden, one rainy afternoon after school in his parents basement ‘cause we didn’t have anything better to do), so I knew just how to use what I had to get what I want – and in a place, where style was emphasized over substance and sex was just another way of saying ‘Please consider me for this role!’, my good looks and non-existent morality had dropped me into a world which was just one big party.
Looking back, I can’t believe just how much of a stupid bitch I had been… I honestly believed that I would simply show up in Los Angeles, walk down the street, and producers would be tripping over themselves to cast me in Oscar-winning roles, merely because I was just so fucking amazing. Of course it didn’t work out that way – instead, for almost ten years I worked a series of low-paying jobs while going for the occasional role promoted by a friend, a fuck-buddy, or someone who managed to convince me that they were far more connected than they turned out to be. I got a few jobs, nothing important and infinitely forgettable, and by the time I was flirting with thirty it had become apparent that I had wasted far too much of my life on my back in a drug-fueled haze. I buckled down then, but it was far, far too late… the roles I would have been perfect for were going to girls fifteen years younger. The acting gigs came less and less, but other aspects of the industry opened up – and now at forty-five here I was, a low-ranked agent with a total of four rather forgettable clients, a ten-year-old Porsche and a mortgage on which I was two months behind, with a bank account balance usually hovering in the single digits and a pair of double-D breast implants that just didn’t look… quite… right…
… which perhaps explained why I was parked by the side of the road in the middle of a warm June night, my engine idling and a phone pressed up to the side of my head as I tried not to snap at a mostly-stoned twenty-something blonde bimbo who was busy doing lines of coke in a club somewhere. Speaking of which…
“Hello?!?” The screech of the trashy blonde party-girl crackled over the phone, dragging me back to the here-and-now. “Are you listening to me?!?”
“I’m listening, I’m here,” I quickly replied. Whine about your life later, you’ve got bills to pay! “Look, Melody,” I continued, working hard to keep my voice even as I tugged my skirt down over my thighs a bit and scowled at the where-the-fuck-did-THIS-crap-come-from-I-fucking-STARVE-myself cellulite dimpling my once taut flesh, “I know you’re a way better actress than Tara…”
“You got that fuckin’ right!” she slurredly interrupted.
“… but I’ve said it before, if you want to compete with her for those roles you need to go on a lot more auditions.” A flash caught my attention and I glanced in my rear view mirror, noting the tanker truck barreling down the highway amidst a small clot of cars. The Hollywood Freeway was always busy, always filled with people hurrying from point A to point B – when it wasn’t a parking lot – and at three in the morning it was no different. “She’s never going to actually win this thing, she’s just trying to make sure that you don’t go for the same roles as she’s going for by fucking with your mind. You see…”
It happened so quickly that I wasn’t even aware that it was happening, that it had happened, until after it had occurred. A wave of dizziness washed over me, almost as if I had chugged an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and had followed that with a pharmaceutical cocktail – and from there it only got worse. There was a feeling like I was falling from a great height that lasted only a millisecond before it was replaced by a wrenching agony, a pain that ripped through my entire body from the soles of my feet all the way to the tips of my long red hair as everything, everything, twisted and warped and tore, and I heard a truly titanic crash and the sound of tearing metal and a distant shriek and realized that it was me screaming as my entire being was shredded and reassembled and Oh my GOD what is HAPPENING to ME…
And then, just as suddenly as it washed over me, it was over. I gasped raggedly and just lay across the center console, my head resting on my purse in the passenger seat and the handle of the parking brake digging into my side as I tried to ride the wave of nausea that coursed through my very soul. What the fuck was THAT?!? I thought as I screwed my eyes shut and just breathed, my cheeks wet with tears. I’m okay… I’m okay… Blindly I groped for the steering wheel, and when the back of my hand made contact with the warm vinyl circle I fumbled for a grip and pulled myself back upright, slumping in my seat as another wave of dizziness threatened to make me vomit.
Slowly my stomach calmed down, slowly the dizziness began to fade, and just as slowly the world returned to my senses. The first thing I noticed was the sound of screeching tires, the scream of skidding rubber on asphalt that ended in yet another horrendous crash of tearing metal. I slowly blinked the tears out of my watery eyes and tried to focus through the windshield to see what was going on, but before I could get my bearings something slammed into the back of my Porsche at full speed, the impact whipping my body back into my seat as a fountain of shattered glass cascaded past my head and then my head whipped forward and my forehead hit the steering wheel and then it was all darkness.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but it was more than a few minutes, probably less than an hour. The first thing that I became aware of was a blinding pain in my head, a dull throbbing that spiked an ice pick into the front of my brain as I stirred. “Ow…” Everything hurt, every part of my body felt as though someone had lain me down on the floor and jumped up and down on me, and it was all I could do to raise my head. I whimpered in pain as I slumped back in the seat, trying to understand, trying to force myself to comprehend where I was and what was happening. I lifted my arm and somehow managed to wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, and as it came away I dully noted the smear of blood on my pale skin.
Think! Think… I was in the seat of my Porsche, sitting at an angle with my nose pointed downhill. I was in an accident. Someone hit me. I smacked my lips and instantly whimpered as I felt the tearing pain in my lower lip and tasted blood. Split lip, not good. Gingerly I poked my teeth with my tongue and, to my relief, found everything intact. There’s that. Don’t need a dentist! Arms and legs okay if a little stiff, back and belly functioning and intact, chest…
Something was wrong with my boobs!!!
My bra was hanging loose down around the bottom of my ribcage, and in a panic I brought my palms up to my chest. There was nothing there – instead of the large, firm double-D breasts that I had bought and paid for so many years ago, there was nothing but smooth, flat flesh through which I could feel my ribs. “Oh my God oh my God OH MY GOD…” With a growing sense of hysteria-fueled terror I groped myself, and then scrabbled for the door latch. A truly titanic heave, backed by hysterical strength, forced the driver’s door open with a screech of metal, and I tumbled out of the seat and onto the prickly scrub brush beside the car. The impact whuffed! the air out of my lungs and I slid a couple of feet down the hill, accumulating scratches on my thighs and ass and left arm as my skirt rolled up to my waist and one shoe slipped off my foot and tumbled downhill. “No, please God, no…” I moaned as I looked around wildly.
And then I just froze, my mouth agape, as I stared out over a hellish panorama. From my vantage point I could see over the city, and realized just how bad this – whatever happened – actually was. The Los Angeles skyline was still there, still intact, which told me that a massive bomb hadn’t gone off – but the distant flickering of orange light here and there told me that fires were everywhere belching columns of bottom-lit black smoke into the sky. The air was filled with the blaring sounds of car alarms, and I could hear the distant whine of a siren – although whether it was an ambulance or a police car I couldn’t tell – as it echoed from the hills around me. I turned my head and saw that I was about ten feet down from the edge of the road, the crumpled tail of my Porsche and splintered remains of the guardrail telling me that something had slammed into the back of me. Beside me the engine of my car ticked as it cooled, and I could smell the heavy, acrid stench of chemicals burning my sinuses.
As for me… that was most shocking of all. I moved my arms listlessly, trying to make my confused brain understand what was happening, and realized that they felt wrong, felt as though they were far too light. Everything seemed to work, and I dug my fingertips into the firm-packed soil beneath me to verify that it was indeed my body moving. I shifted slightly, which caused me to slide another inch or two down the slope, and a scraping pain lanced up the back of my thigh as something gouged into my seemingly-sensitive flesh. I slowly rolled over and got to my knees, and then tried to get to my feet – and instantly my skirt, which had been far too tight around my flabby hips when I had sucked in my slowly growing paunch to pull up the zipper earlier that evening slid down my legs to pool around my feet. “What’s happening to me?” I whined weakly as I clutched one side of my baggy panties to my hip to keep them up, my other hand gripping the hood of the Porsche to lever myself to standing position. My legs were unsteady, wobbly, almost feeling as if they would give out at any moment, but I locked my knees through sheer force of will and, after a brief wave of dizziness, I managed to keep standing.
Once upright I felt a rather heavy thump as my bra bounced against my belly, and the feeling instantly reminded me of what had forced me out of the car in the first place. My boobs! My hand let go of my panties (which promptly sagged lower, although they stayed up if I cocked my hip to one side like a Thai hooker – or, at least like I believed that a Thai hooker would cock her hip, given everything that the movie industry had taught me) and then slid up under my silk blouse, groping for the clasp now located somewhere around the middle of my back. With nimble fingers I unsnapped it and my cups instantly sagged even lower, throwing off my balance a bit and forcing me to lean forward. The movement of my body sent something heavy plopping into the dirt at my feet, and as I shrugged a second heavy thing plopped down, and suddenly I felt about twenty pounds lighter. What the Hell… I peered down and then bent a bit to have a closer look – and then felt my heart skip a beat when I realized that the things were breast implants, my breast implants that were no longer lodged behind my nipples and giving me the inflated bosom of a Hollywood movie star. “No no no no no…” My hand slid across my flat chest and then dipped beneath my blouse again, my fingers searching for the gaping wounds I was convinced were torn into my tender flesh – but I felt nothing, nothing but smooth flesh and tiny little nipples. “What is this,” I moaned as I tried to shrug out of my bra before realizing that I couldn’t get it off without removing my blouse, my brain focusing on it rather than the horror that I was undergoing. “What…”
THAT’S when I finally noticed it… I was standing by the front wheel of my car, but the perspective seemed off. My confused brain tried to make sense, tried to figure out why nothing looked right, and it took me more than a few seconds – but then realization hit me like a bolt. I’m too short!!! When I left earlier that evening I remembered walking past the front of the Porsche in my garage like I always had, the metal hood reaching to my hip. But NOW, on the side of the hill, my arm was stretched out almost horizontally as I clutched the warm metal. With a moan of fear I scrabbled forward, lunging for the door mirror in front of me, not wanting to see what had happened but having to know…
The face that stared back at me was covered in streaks of blood from the angry, purple knot on my forehead, but it was definitely not mine! Well, it was… but it wasn’t. My eyes were larger in my face, almost doe-like with the sheer terror shining within and containing just a hint of madness. My cheekbones were gone and for a second I thought that I had smashed my face in before I realized that it only looked like they were gone, hidden from view because my face was a bit pudgier than it had been… before. My lips were a bit fuller (although whether from the drying, cracked gash on the lower one or just because, I wasn’t quite sure) and the signs of age were gone, the crow’s feet and frown lines and scowl marks no longer existed, in their place smooth, unlined skin. And freckles, the wash of freckles across my nose spattering from one ear to the other were back, they were back, and that was impossible because I had a dermatologist do some procedure when I was seventeen to get rid of them once and for all so I didn’t look like a slutty version of Pippi Longstocking when I put my hair into braids…
“Holy shit,” I whispered to myself as I gazed into my own shocked eyes. “I’m a little girl again!”
I could feel the hysteria building up inside of me, a desire to drop to the ground and curl into a ball and screw my eyes shut and just wait for this nightmare to end, when there was a dull crack and a metallic creak and the Porsche slid downhill another half-foot. Startled, I stepped backwards only to lose my footing and land smack on my ass once more, the scrub brush tearing through the thin silk of my panties and gouging into my backside. With a hiss I blinked the tears out of my eyes and got back to my feet as there was another crack and the car slid another inch… Fuck, my purse and phone! The realization that I was miles away from home, in the body of a little girl, half-naked and scratched up with a gash across my forehead on the side of a hill in the middle of the night snapped me back to the present, and with a squeak of panic I scrabbled forward. “Don’t slide don’t slide just stay right there…” The interior of the Porsche was a mess, with broken glass everywhere and my blood on the steering wheel, but I ignored it as I leaned in. The car cracked and slid another two inches as I grabbed my purse with one hand and yanked at my keychain, snapping the ignition key as I did so (but it’s not like I would need it) with the other. I whipped my gaze around wildly and found my phone lodged under the accelerator, and collected another few gouges on my fingers from razor-sharp shards of rear windshield as I snatched it up. There was another loud crack and I instinctively threw myself backwards just as the car slid another two inches, paused, and then with a groan slid down again, slid faster and faster, crashing down into the darkness below with the sound of tearing metal and shattering glass. And I just lay there, panting, clutching my treasures in my tiny hands as I tried to catch my breath and calm my nerves.
What am I going to do now? I wondered as my breathing slowed but still had a way to go before it returned to normal. I placed my purse in the dirt beside me, dropped my keys inside, and thumbed my phone. There was a scratch across the front from the glass but it still worked, and with trembling fingers I dialed 911. The phone clicked once, twice, and then a woman’s voice, her words clipped and almost mechanical, responded. “All circuits are busy, please try your call again later. Error six… four… nine.” There was a tone, and the line went dead. I quickly dialed again, only to get the same response – and I realized that I was on my own.
What now? I repeated. I thought about it – and realized that, more than anything else, I wanted to go home. I wanted the safety and security of my house, my shower, my clothes, my old life. I wanted – I needed it. I wanted to hide and just get better. I wanted to hide so that nobody could see what I had become. And right then, as much as I hated to admit it, there was only one way that I could get what I wanted.
I couldn’t find either one of my high heels. They weren’t expensive, but they were mine and I liked them. And now they were somewhere down in the darkness with the remains of my Porsche. Along with my skirt. Along with my no-longer-useful, magically-surgically-removed implants. Along with the emergency earthquake kit I had stowed in the trunk, and hadn’t actually thought about since I bought the car – which was useless to me now.
That last one made me want to cry.
From my vantage point just off the sidewalk I could see her – and in the dim, almost wan glow of the far-too-low wattage bulb illuminating the alcove to the apartment complex in which I lurked, I could tell that she could see me. She was small, with long, dirty blonde tangles that desperately needed a good brushing, a tiny little turned-up nose, and eyes that I thought might be blue, if the remains of her tear- and sweat-streaked eyeshadow was any indication. She didn’t look much taller than I – in fact, I guessed she might have been an inch or two shorter, it was hard to tell at a distance – and she looked young. Very, very young. The once-skin-tight slutty red dress she wore hung off her like a circus tent, the ribbed bodice designed to show off her assets held against her now-flat chest by one twisted fist while she clutched a pair of six inch fuck-me heels in her other hand. Idly I wondered how I looked to her, a half-naked little redhead covered in scratches and gouges and soaked with blood, hiding in a doorway like a psycho rapist or something… but then the sound of distant gunfire, six shots pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop in rapid succession caused me to stiffen, and I tore my gaze away from her and peeked around the brick to see if anyone, anything, was coming. The street remained empty – but given my current state, I wasn’t about to take any chances. After what I had seen over the past hour…
The second that I managed to make it back up the slope and to the highway I knew that the world would never be the same. No more traffic flowed along the road, and the vehicles that I saw were smashed wrecks, in most cases beyond repair. To my left the road snaked up further into the hills, and my eyes darted from accident to accident, seeing nothing but twisted metal and skid marks and gouged asphalt and broken guardrails. Immediately to my right was a late-model sedan, evidently the car that had rear-ended me and sent me spinning through the guardrail, the front end crumpled and both front tires gone as it nosed against the splintered wood separating it from joining my Porsche down in the dark ravine below. I slipped forward, wincing as small, sharp stones punched holes in the soles of my feet, and took a couple of tiny steps sideways to move along the (relatively) smoother black ribbon next to me, the surface still warm from the afternoon sun beating down on it. Coming up close I glanced into the wreck, expecting to see a bloody, mangled corpse – but I could only stare dumbly as my eyes took in nothing but a pile of clothing on the seat, the seatbelt still latched tightly. “Weird,” I muttered as I tightened my grip on my oversized panties and looked up and down the highway, but I didn’t see the driver. Or what was left of the driver. Or what was left of anyone. “Where is everybody?” It was the absence of life, the complete lack of any other soul moving, that unnerved me the most… given our proximity to downtown, the highway should have been swarming with police and firemen and EMTs, with news choppers hovering overhead filming everyone and everything, all part of the 24/7 peepshow that America had become. But nothing was there, nothing moved along the highway but me.
I kept moving, making my way slowly towards the nearby exit ramp and home. Only one mile, I told myself, you can make it one mile. I hissed in pain as I stepped on an especially sharp stone, quickly hopping off the dagger-like rock and back onto the still-warm asphalt. Not going to make it far unless I find shoes! I puffed a few stray strands of hair out of my eyes and looked around, grumbling as I realized that that was going to be more difficult than it sounded. I paused as a wave of panic washed over me, but it only lasted a second before draining away. I took a deep breath, let it go in a long, shuddering exhalation, and kept going.
The tanker I had noticed just before – it – happened was a burning, twisted wreck, laying half across the highway where it jackknifed before exploding, and even though it was over on the other side of the highway with the crumpled cab planted firmly in the side of the hill on the northbound side I could still feel the heat of burning fuel on my skin. I shuffled past, carefully winding my way between the smoldering asphalt ribbon and the edge of the hill, paying special attention to the placement of my bruised feet so that I didn’t lose my balance. Then the raging fire was behind me, and I wiped the sweat from my face with one sleeve as I kept going… only hesitating half a second as the thought of smearing my makeup and facial blood on the sleeve held me back before I decided that the damage had already been done. More wrecks, more distant alarms, a single gunshot in the distance that sounded like a cannon and made me freeze momentarily – but still no people. It was eerie and I shuddered just a bit, wanting nothing more than to find a hole in which to hide… but I forced myself to keep moving forward.
Another five hundred feet down the road, an overturned minivan gave me a tiny opportunity to improve my state just a bit. The interior was empty except for crumpled clothing and what looked like a million ancient little Cheerios scattered on the upside-down roof, and I gingerly made my way through a sea of broken glass to peer inside. Through the side window I could see it – a single tiny shoe, a pink thing with a hard vinyl pattern along the edges and across the top. I carefully reached inside and tugged it past the shattered window, trying not to shiver at the abandoned clothing, the scattered things, the sheer weirdness of the remains of people who were there one minute and gone the next. I pulled a tiny, somewhat grimy sock out of the thing and then compared it to my own foot – and it seemed kinda close, size-wise. Weird, so weird… I crouched back down and peered inside but couldn’t spot the other shoe, and there was no power on Earth that would make me crawl inside the thing to search, so I gingerly limped my way back out of the crash sight, leaned against the railing, and slipped my single prize over my foot. It was a tiny bit too large and felt as though it were going to slide off at any second, but I managed to tighten the Velcro straps across the top as tightly as possible and it did the trick – and for some weird reason I felt incredibly proud of myself. Hooray for small victories.
Half a mile down the highway I finally found signs of life – or rather, the remains of life. It had once been an incredibly expensive-looking Mercedes, one of those cars that practically screamed wealth while at the same time almost oozing power, but now was just a twisted, smoldering wreck. I could tell what had happened… when the whatever-it-was went down a limo had skidded and flipped over, and the Mercedes had immediately plowed right into the side of it. The driver had evidently been a blue-eyed blonde whose makeup and dress shouted High-Powered Studio Executive, the kind I’d dealt with hundreds of times before, although she had been transformed just like me into a pre-teen girl of about eight. She hadn’t been as lucky as I had been, and the impact had sent her head-first straight through the windshield. I stared at the body, trying to force myself to look away but for some reason unable to take my gaze away from her sightless sapphire orbs, feeling sick at the jagged shard of glass punching straight through her throat and out the back of her neck. All that blood is going to be a bitch to get out, I noted distantly, grasping onto the only possible thing I could to keep myself from screaming and throwing up and bursting into tears right there on the highway. I wanted to say something, I should say something, but nothing came to mind. “I’m… sorry,” I finally whispered lamely to the girl. Naturally she didn’t respond to my apology but continued to stare at me with her dead eyes, almost as if she wanted to ask why I got to live while she had to die, and I slowly backed away and made my way around the wreck, helpless to do anything else.
Finally I reached the off-ramp leading down to the side streets – and specifically to Mulholland Drive, the twisting, turning road that led up into the hills where my house sat waiting for me. I paused for a moment to rest my battered right foot, leaning up against the wooden guard rail and peering down onto the streets below. The squeal of tires caused me to stiffen, and I tightened my grip on the rough wood in front of me as a late-model sedan with a rusty bumper shot out of a side street, side-swiped a parked SUV, and then went tearing south in a roar of fury and a cloud of exhaust. Others are out there, I thought. Are they the same as me? “Where are the police?” I wondered aloud. “Where is everyone?”
The rumble went on long after the car vanished – and then I realized that it wasn’t the sedan, but rather something overhead! I looked up just as a massive jet airliner flew overhead, seemingly so low that I actually believed for a moment that I could touch it if I just hopped, and flying way too slowly. The growl of the turbines rattled my teeth as the plane soared over me, the wings wriggling slightly as it ambled forward, moseying straight for downtown, and for a moment my mind flashed back to 9/11 and the arrogant, egotistical fears that we Angelinos had held that we would be a legitimate target for international terrorism. And then a wing tip dipped and tilted, the right side sliding lower and lower as the wing dropped, and then I could only watch in horror as the plane clipped a multi-story building further downtown and the jet dropped fully, the tail shooting into the air as the nose plunged groundward and it cartwheeled into the short, squat porno shops and low-rent apartments of South Hollywood, disintegrating into a brilliant fireball that consumed everything in its path. I could feel the roaring rumble of the catastrophe shake my bones as I squatted and pressed my hands against my ears, unable to take my eyes from the sheer destructive spectacle playing out before me, almost whimpering in terror as untold numbers of people perished. “This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening…” The horror of the crash mesmerized me, and I wasted untold minutes simply staring and wondering at the carnage before I remembered my predicament, and as the fires raged downtown I forced myself to stand, my knees wobbling and a strange twisting in my gut, and put one foot in front of the other.
Cahuenga Boulevard had gone through gentrification way back in the early 1980s before I showed up on the scene, and as a result was a combination of ungodly-expensive apartments interspersed with high-end restaurants, with the occasional boutique store tucked in here and there – but even here there were signs of the whatever-had-happened. More than a few fender-benders were scattered up and down the road, cars that had veered off to the side and had plowed into another parked vehicle or the side of a building, while the sidewalk was peppered with abandoned clothing that was just – piled – here and there. I hesitated as I reached the bottom of the ramp, half-lurking behind the shrubs planted around the patio of a Thai/Mexican fusion place and biting my lower lip as I tried to peer up and down the street. Part of me hoped that there was nobody out who could actually see my new diminutive form (or my bloody, half-dressed state – I wasn’t quite sure which embarrassed me out more), but after everything I saw up on the highway above part of me was desperate for the sight of another human being. I glanced behind me at the outdoor dining area and saw nothing besides tables holding upturned chairs, and then back out at the shadowy street. Two blocks down, I thought to myself as I tried to steel myself for the journey ahead. And then I can hit the back roads. Gingerly I slipped between a towering shrub and the corner of the building, pressing myself against the warm brick wall next to me and convinced that at any moment hundreds of people would pour into the street to ogle – and laugh – at my almost-nudity, but nobody emerged, nobody leapt out at me, no paparazzi leaned out of a stalled car to snap a billion pictures of my humiliation. Another step, then another, and then I was skittering down the sidewalk, ducking every so often into an alcove or behind a shrub. It was slow going, but I wasn’t going to risk moving too fast.
I spotted movement just as I was reaching the point in which I would turn to head up into the hills and home. She was actually mirroring my movements from the other direction, kind-of scuttling along while pressed up against the buildings on the other side of the street. Everything about her screamed Slutty Club Girl – from the teased-out hair to the short and tight red dress to the six-inch heels to the shadowy makeup, she gave the impression of a woman out looking for a good time. Or she would have, if the entire ensemble hadn’t been plastered on a girl who looked no older than eight. She kept glancing behind her, whipping her head around as if she were convinced Jason Voorhees was creeping up behind her with a machete to turn her into chum… and then, when she saw that she was still alone, she would relax just a hair and continue skittering down the concrete ribbon before her.
I was about ready to call out to her when I paused… who knew what she was thinking, or what she would do, or what she would think I would do, and the thought of someone actually seeing me like I was filled me with dread! So instead I shrank back into the alcove of an apartment building and tried to make myself invisible, unsure if I should draw attention to myself. I shouldn’t have bothered – she spotted me when directly across from my hiding spot and stiffened as she froze in place. I stared at her, she stared at me… and not knowing what else to do, I raised my hand and gave her a tiny wave. She just continued staring, her eyes as wide as saucers as she clutched her heels to her chest – and the second the distant shots rang out and I dropped my hand she bolted, practically racing down the sidewalk in a mad dash of slapping bare feet and ducking around the corner of a small bodega, a pre-gentrification leftover that I knew usually did brisk business selling cigarettes to hipsters. I waited for a few minutes but she didn’t reappear… although I think that I got a split-second glimpse of a tiny blonde head peeping out from where her hiding spot might have been, but in truth I couldn’t be sure. I was half-tempted to wait longer, but there was a titanic crash of something toppling over in the apartment above me and my nerve vanished, so I abandoned my hiding spot.
Mulholland Drive was one of those seminal roads that everyone had seen in countless movies and television shows but didn’t truly know. It was a weird place – some of it had an untouched, undeveloped look that offered incredible panoramas of the city below, but just finish moving around the curve in the road and you’d find yourself moving through a small clot of very expensive houses clinging to the hillside. Just a few feet up a slight hill and I was plunged back into the relative darkness, a twist in the road concealing Cahuenga behind a screen of trees. The houses I passed were mostly silent and dark, looming in the shadows and exuding a menacing quality that I really, really did not want to explore. There was one house with the porch light glowing merrily and the garage door open in which I would swear that I saw a figure moving around inside, but beyond that single thing there was still nobody. Another twist took the view away, and I navigated my way through the warm night air through memory. Still, even though the only living, breathing person I had seen since IT happened was Slutty Club Girl, I could tell that there was life out there, if the distant sounds of gunfire and sirens were any indication. A flash around a curve in front of me drew my attention, and I quickly scuttled off the road and behind a tree as a pristine-looking Saab tore around the bend and shot past me, the driver moving way too fast and flashing by in a blur of motion before vanishing downhill. The world around me was plunged back into darkness and relative silence, and after what I believed was a proper length of time I kept going.
Given the slow speed in which I was travelling and my desire not to draw any attention to myself, it took me close to another hour to cover the mile-plus distance up to my house. Along the way I passed three more houses that still showed signs of life, including one from which muffled crashes and bangs leaked through the walls and into my ears a good one hundred feet away as someone destroyed everything in their home – I gave that one a wide berth. I had to duck off the road two more times when vehicles passed, once as someone’s Corvette raced down the hill and again as a beat-up landscaper’s truck slowly crept uphill, and both times I curled into a tiny little ball behind some scenery and prayed that neither one would stop. But eventually my nightmarish trek came to an end and as I rounded the last curve in the road my heart leapt in my chest as I spotted my destination – the wan, almost tentative glow of my porch light shining like a welcoming beacon in the darkness.
I had purchased my home back when I was convinced that a small role I had managed to land was going to take off, but the show was cancelled after a single season… and even though I really couldn’t afford it, it was mine and I was determined to keep it. It wasn’t perfect – if I had to be honest it sat a little low and squat to the ground, was clearly designed by an architect that had been seriously stoned, and featured the flat plains and sharp angles of the 1970s. But it featured a sheer, almost featureless front wall of ivory stucco in which the only windows were heavy, thick glass bricks framing the front door, a porch off the rear sporting a truly spectacular view of the city below (and which included a hot tub of which I frequently took advantage!), and had a master suite that made me feel like a queen. Just a little bit further, I told myself as I quickened my limping gait a bit more, eager for the safety and security of thick walls between me and the outside world. Just a few more minutes…
There was the sound of something large smashing through glass nearby and I froze… and then quickly scrambled for the only cover I could find, a line of recycling bins that one of my neighbors had left out at the end of his driveway. The sound had come from one of my neighbors, a house owned by a pair of older gay guys that I vaguely knew who always seemed to have money even though I had no idea what the pair actually did for a living. I squatted down and peered through the bins in an attempt to see what was happening – and felt my heart skip a beat as I saw a figure standing in their front yard. He was backlit by a brilliant light shining through the shattered plate-glass window of their house so I couldn’t make out many details, but he was definitely a he, looked to be a teenager, and there was something very, very wrong with him. He stood in the grass clad only in a pair over oversized, baggy boxers, huffing and puffing and almost swaying back and forth a little bit. Don’t look over here don’t look here nothing here to see…
As I held my breath and watched, I could feel a strange sensation washing over me. I felt hot, felt almost as though I were feverish, and it was all I could do not to shiver in the warm air of the night. He lifted his face and jerked his head back and forth as if he were trying to find something while I bit my lip – distantly feeling the pain of the split – and tried to figure out what was wrong. There was a throbbing down between my legs, a sensation that I hadn’t felt in far too long, as if I were… Holy fucking shit, am I getting HORNY?!? I was… I could feel a warm, slick wetness in my slit, a tight, almost aching need that burned deep inside of me. My nipples felt hard enough to cut glass, and I felt slick down there, an oily wet that seemed to drool out of my body. What the fuck is the matter with me?!? Almost instinctively I lowered my knees to the rough ground beneath me and slipped my free hand between my legs, my fingertips seeking out the sensitive button that was just screaming to be stroked. A tiny little shudder of pleasure trembled through my body, but then I froze – the figure dashed to the road and then stopped just ten feet away, standing barefoot on the asphalt as he whipped his head back and forth as if in search of something. Is it me? I wondered… and was horrified to find myself getting even hotter as I heard him growl softly, an almost animalistic grumble from deep in his chest that seemed to thrill my very soul. It was so hard to concentrate, so hard to keep silent, and his labored breathing was almost a beacon, and part of me wanted to slip out from my hiding place and pull off those sticky panties and just let him fuck me, to hold me down and shove his cock inside my achingly-empty pussy and fuck me stupid…
I don’t know how I managed it, but the rational, mature part of my brain managed to prevent me from doing something incredibly stupid. Whatever the thing was, I knew, I just knew, that I didn’t want it to find me! I held my breath and tried to make myself as small as possible, clasping one tiny hand over my mouth and nose as I stared through the crack at the tall, shadowy figure growling just feet away from me. But my other hand almost instinctively slipped down between my thighs, stroking my stiff, oh-so-sensitive clit almost lazily and sending little shots of electric pleasure shooting through my body. What the fuck, why am I frigging myself?!? I wondered as I stifled a shudder and tried to force my hand away from myself – and failed miserably. It felt good, so good to finger myself through the thin silk of my panties, and I didn’t want to stop, wanted to feel this glorious sensation forever…
I stifled a scream as the shadowy thing shook itself, let loose a truly terrifying growl, and dashed down the road, his – its – bare feet slapping on the asphalt as it moved off in pursuit of something else. I quietly exhaled the breath that I hadn’t even realized I was holding and was almost stunned at the tiny, sex-fueled moan that oozed out with it. Oh God, this feels SO GOOD… My body felt like it was on fire, that whatever intelligence I had was being wiped away as my little-girl lust swamped my mind, and I dropped my other hand down between my slightly spread legs. Using three fingertips I pulled at my mound, stretching out the flesh down there and exposing my painfully-hard clit a bit more, and I gasped as my stroking fingers tore even greater bolts of pleasure from my sex. I was wet, far wetter than I could ever remember, and I stroked even faster as my breath came in ragged gasps. My trembling legs finally gave out and I dropped to the grass, feeling the damp soak into my bare knees as I hunched over and fingered myself faster, faster, faster still, feeling the wave rising higher and higher, feeling everything fade into the distance as my entire world became that glorious sensation flaring from between my splayed thighs…
And then I came, hard and firm and so suddenly that it surprised me. Deep within my belly I felt a clenching, and tiny little sparks flashed in my vision as I crashed over the edge in a truly titanic orgasm, my little-girl body almost convulsing and the sheer fury of the pleasure washing through it. Distantly I tasted blood from my lip in my mouth, heard the muffled hiss of the wind through the trees around me, felt the rough ground beneath my knees scrape my flesh as my thighs snapped together, everything almost happening outside my body… my entire world was filled with the delicious clenching of my wet, throbbing pussy. This wasn’t the tiny little shudders that I experienced when touching myself before, was absolutely nothing like I had felt when I slept with some random hook-up – this was a true, direct, mind-blowing explosion of sheer sexual release. I leaned forward, bending almost double as I pressed my fingertips firmly against my rock-hard clit and my womanly – girlish? – juices flowed from my hot, sensitive slit, soaking into the already-ruined remains of my panties. It was perfect, it was beautiful, and I wanted it to last forever, to just fade away and exist in this amazing place of pure pleasure…
But of course it couldn’t. I finally began to come down from my masturbatory high as my cunt relaxed and the crashing tidal wave of bliss tempered down to a warm, languid feeling of satisfaction. I became aware of the world around me once more, aware of how uncomfortably scraped my knees felt, aware of the sheen of girl-sweat plastering my ripped and blood-stained blouse to my back, aware of the oily wetness of the crotch of my panties. And then I recalled where I was, and what had happened… and most of all, what I had become. What the fuck is wrong with me?!? my mind screamed as I stifled a moan of shame. I slipped my fingers from between my legs and pressed both hands into the hard-packed earth, actually digging my short nails into the dirt as I shivered and felt sick to my stomach. Why did I do that? I’m sick, I’m so sick, oh GOD what kind of filthy whore am I…
I was helpless to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.
In one hand I had the collar of my big, fluffy bathrobe clenched tight, almost as if by holding it shut I could keep the entire world from seeing what I had become. In the other I held the stem of my wineglass, the thick, red liquid almost sloshing a bit as the drink displayed the trembles in my body that I just couldn’t seem to stop. My green eyes were wide as I stared at the television in shock, my mind almost rebelling at the images before me.
The young teenager with sandy-blonde hair that kept falling into his eyes and the cruel slash of a mouth glanced down at the papers on the desk, almost hissed in annoyance, and then looked back up. “Repeating our top story,” he said in a voice that actually caused a little lust-tremor to shoot through my body, “the nation… the world… is in chaos. I’m Donald Ricketts.” He smirked at me and I felt an ooze of slickness in my pre-teen pussy, and even though I logically knew that he didn’t even know that I existed I almost felt like he was talking just to me and me alone. “Yes, that Donald Ricketts,” he added, “and as you can see, whatever this… thing… is not just in your own homes. Reports are still sketchy, but it appears that this… thing… is worldwide.”
He glanced back down, glanced away from me, and then fixed me again with his almost predatory gaze that made me want to moan in pleasure. “At approximately 6:00 AM this morning, some… force… transformed the entire population of the world. Many people are missing – we don’t have hard numbers yet, but the count is sure to reach well into the millions, if not higher. And those who… survived? I’m not sure if that’s the correct word to use in this situation,” he opined. “Those who survived have been transformed. A brief report from Washington indicates that, somehow, every survivor of this event has been transformed into a child. The impossible has happened… and it has happened to all of us.”
A small, elfin Asian girl who looked about as young as I was – and actually caused a little spark of jealousy in my brain at her silky black hair and tight, wriggling little ass – dashed into the camera shot to deliver something to the anchor. Bad form, the professional part of me mumbled as I scowled. Should have snuck in behind the desk, stay out of the camera view. “A… We have an…” He paused, read the sheet closer, and glanced away. “Are you fu… kidding me?” he asked, his voice going up a full octave and his tanned skin actually paling just a bit. “I…” Donald took a deep breath, shook his head, and peered into the camera. “This Event seems to defy all logic,” he finally managed to choke out. “At this time, researchers at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta are estimating that approximately seventy-five percent of the global population is now just… gone. The survivors seem to be primarily female, under the age of twelve. Conversely, those males who survived are in their low-teens. And the vast majority of those who have disappeared were under the age of forty.” He sighed and slumped back in his chair, and I don’t know why but I wanted to just lean forward, reach through the screen, and brush a few stray strands of his hair off his forehead. “We are definitely entering some strange times, people. I don’t know what the future will hold for us, only that we need to be strong. And I’ve got nothing else at this moment… why don’t we go to commercial?” He paused for a moment and then scowled as he sat back up and glared. “I don’t know, who the fuck cares?” he snapped. “Just go to a fucking break!” The newsroom was replaced by a commercial selling Viagra, and I just sat back, and tried not to panic, tried not to burst into tears… tried not to feel. It wasn’t hard. The horrors I had witnessed made my soul numb. The numbness in my soul helped me not to feel. So… win-win. I guess.
Except for my lust, which was rising yet again. Yet again. God, what kind of fucking slut have I become…
After I recovered from my sex-fueled shame and managed to get myself moving for one last burst, the rest of the trip was almost anticlimactic. Except for the light spilling out of my neighbor’s shattered front window, the spattering of houses we all mockingly called Our Neighborhood were still dark and eerily silent. Around me the air was heavy and reeked of smoke, a pall that seemed more acidic than the normal polluted haze of the Los Angeles basin. There was also a feeling in the world around me, a sensation that didn’t seem to be caused by any specific thing but felt pregnant with worry and terror and darkness. It was almost as if everyone and everything were holding their collective breath, waiting for… something. Something dark. Something evil. Something far, far worse than what had already happened to each and every one of us. Something hungry.
It was coming. I could feel it coming. And I so did not want to be around when it arrived.
The down side to both the late hour and relative isolation was the fact that there were so many shadows, big, black pools of inky darkness in which I strained to see. Tucked in beside small houses in which not a single light burned, looming in the thick copses of trees moving up the hill towards the ridge tops, every patch of un-light seemed almost menacing, seemed to hold someone or something that was just waiting to leap out at me and… Before all I had to worry about were rapists and drive by shootings like every other girl, I mused bitterly as I squatted behind a small hedge separating the front lawn of one of my neighbors from the edge of the road, a short little thing that provided no defense whatsoever but was placed to reinforce the demarcation line between private property and public access. But NOW I have to worry about psychopaths too?!? My mind flashed back to the crazed madman who had dashed past me while I cowered in the shadows, and how I knew, just knew, that he not only wanted to rape me but probably do far, far worse. Of course, that reminded me of what I had done, the twisted little self-love session that simultaneously thrilled and sickened me even as the lunatic was only ten feet away – the feeling of my orgasm, the sensation of my womanly juices flowing was so incredibly delicious that I could barely believe that it had happened, while the idea that I had done what I had done, in a body that wasn’t mine (It couldn’t be! my mind screamed yet again, It can’t be! It isn’t!!!), in a body of a little girl, caused my gorge to rise. Jesus, I’m so sick…
After recovering and making sure that I was once more alone, I quickly skittered out of my hiding spot on weak and trembling legs, making one last mad dash to my front door. As my one shoe/one bare foot made an odd cadence on my driveway (a weird sort-of scuff-SLAP!-scuff-SLAP!-scuff-SLAP! that sounded far too loud in my ears) I fumbled in my purse for my keys, my fingers instinctively finding the one that would allow me entry into my sanctum. I heard the sound of glass breaking and an inhuman snarl in the distance, and I froze for a moment as I glanced fearfully over my shoulder – but nothing moved nearby and I quickly rammed the key home, twisted the lock, and dashed inside. The foyer was exactly how I had left it – slightly dusty, with a single wan light shining down on the faux-terra cotta tiles and the dark table and mirror combo sporting a small Aztec-style bowl for my keys and a small vase filled with somewhat wilted flowers. I carefully avoided my reflection in the mirror as I threw the deadbolt – at that moment I definitely didn’t want to see my shame!
Finally safe, I leaned against the door, relishing the solid feeling of the hardwood against my back, and tried think of my next move. And I knew almost instantly what it was… I wanted to be clean. I was filthy and bruised and scratched up and covered in grime, and my crotch felt sticky and gooey from my orgasm, and I just wanted it off of me, wanted to feel pure again! I left my purse by the door and moved down the hall to the right, kicking off my purloined shoe as I went, my movements speeding up with each fall of my foot. I shrugged out of my blouse as I hit the midway point, the now-useless bra followed an instant later, and with a little hopping motion I managed to strip off my disgusting panties, and then I was racing into the bedroom, my feet slipping slightly on the carpeting as I lunged into the bathroom. Clean… I need to wash!!! I wrenched the tap on and pulled the tab to start the shower and turned…
As the water warmed I stared at myself in the mirror… or rather, I stared in shock at the thing that I had become. Just eight hours ago I was a forty-something woman standing about five-foot-even, with long dark-red hair and a pair of massive breasts – but now I was a little girl. My perspective was way off and I could only see my head and shoulders above the edge of the counter, and the only things that seemed familiar was my hair – which was just as long, but had taken on an almost brighter sheen and was a few shades lighter – and my brilliant green gaze. Face-wise, everything else had changed... Gone were the crow’s feet around the corners of my eyes, gone were the lines etched around my lips, and except for the gouge in my forehead my skin was flawless. Of course, there was a down side to all of this – the bump on my nose that I had gotten removed back when I was a teenager had returned, and when I gingerly pulled down my lower lip to investigate the gash – which was just a tiny little scrape, nowhere near as serious as I first feared – I dully noted that the gap between my two front teeth had returned, a gap that had vanished when started losing my baby teeth at age ten. Holy fuck, I thought as I leaned forward and stared into my newly regenerated form, I look like I did back… My mind wouldn’t accept it, and I just let the statement simply peter out as I stared at the new/old/young me.
The steam from the shower fogged my reflection, and I took an unsteady step backwards as I tore my gaze from my face and looked down my body. My arms and legs were skinny, almost stick-like as they jutted from my lean, narrow frame, and I easily spent a minute staring dumbly at them as I tried to wrap my brain around the fact that I no longer had stretch marks on my shoulders and around my upper thighs. My chest was flat as a board, with the skin stretched over my torso and so thin that I could actually see ribs beneath, my breasts completely gone except for a pair of tiny little pink nipples the color of chewed bubblegum, my semi-stiff nubbins the size of small pencil erasers. And further down, past my flat belly…
Holy shit, there’s, like, NO hair! I ran my fingers across my bare mound, completely smooth and more hairless than the best Brazilian wax I had ever received, without even a hint of pube. I raised my arms and found nothing in my pits, and then ran my fingertips along my forearms and noted nothing there as well. A glance over my shoulder told me that I no longer had an ass, that the thick, flabby thing that I had been sitting on just mere hours before was long gone, replaced by a flat, smooth… nothing. I’m a little girl! my mind screamed. I’m a little girl! I’m like a fucking little girl again!!! “What is this?” I whispered as my heart pounded in my chest and I felt dizzy once again, this time from shock – and then something inside my soul just gave up, and a wave of nothingness washed my hysteria away and I just felt numb.
The shower stung my flesh as I stepped under the hot spray, and I adjusted the temperature down a few degrees to a level that was tolerable. I closed my eyes as I stepped under the cascade, not wanting to see the pink-tinged water flow from my various wounds. Almost like a sleepwalker I turned and leaned back, letting the water soak into my long red hair – and trying not to think about my body. It’s impossible, I’m way too young to survive whatever this is, I moaned to myself as I reached out – upwards, actually, given my new tiny frame – and squirted some shampoo into my palm. What am I now? Ten? Eight? Younger? As I lathered up my mane I tried to think back into the murky recesses of my memory, trying to remember what I looked like way back during my childhood. It was hard… I remembered the big things that happened, but the details were lost to me. I can’t be eight, I mused. When I was eight I remember thinking that I would be getting an ass soon. And, I concluded as I turned and rinsed out my hair, hissing just a little bit at the sting in my forehead, I didn’t even see a hint of that. So I must be younger.
My thoughts were bad enough – but what was far, far worse was when I grabbed my shower sponge, squirted in some body wash, and started scrubbing myself down. My chest was gone, completely gone without even a hint that I would ever get boobs… and my ass was flat as a board, a tiny thing that looked perfectly at home with my narrow hips but which made me realize just how young I had actually become. Six? I mused to myself, picking a number at random that seemed to fit. “As good as anything,” I muttered as I hesitated for a moment – and then slid the sponge between my legs. Just that little bit of attention caused my pussy to twitch, reminding me of the slutty thing I had done just a short while ago, so I quickly scrubbed myself as fast as possible, rinsed off… and then just curled up in a ball under the spray and sobbed.
Eventually the water started to get cold and my fingers started to prune up, so I had no choice but to finally end my shower. One of my big, fluffy towels felt like it was the size of a bed sheet as I dried myself, once again making damn sure I didn’t even look in the direction of the mirror. In my bedroom a quick survey of my closet and dresser drawers informed me that I owned absolutely nothing that could even charitably fit me (unless I was content to parade around in nothing more than a white silk blouse that would hang down to my knees like a dress and make me look like a little girl playing dress-up), so I made do with the next best thing and donned my favorite ‘that-time-of-the-month’ robe. It was warm and soft and felt good against my battered flesh, and it got the job done – as long as I ignored the fact that the hem actually ended up dragging across the floor a good foot behind me as I moved. I wanted… I needed something to drink, a desire that was easily fulfilled with a large wineglass and a bottle of Pinot Noir from California (my go-to drink during times of troubles). The wine burned a bit going down and gave me a strange dizziness, but after the night I had been having I thought it a small price to pay. Out into the living room and onto the couch, and next on the agenda was to try to find out what was going on. I gave 911 another try, got another all-circuits-are-busy message, and instead flicked on the television… and spent the next twenty minutes mesmerized by the Hell unfolding across the planet.
The Viagra commercial was replaced by Ricketts once more, who looked a little bit harried. “We have reports of scattered rioting and violence breaking out, nationwide,” he reported without fanfare. “Locally, a representative of the New York City Police Department has informed us that, currently, gangs of young men in Harlem are breaking into stores and looting. Jin, what’s that?” He focused off over my right shoulder and I had to fight the urge to turn my head and see what he was staring at, forgetting for a moment that he was clear across the country. “Who’s that from? Bring it here.” As the tiny Asian girl – Jin, evidently – dashed back into view, I leaned closer, wondering what new Hell he was going to report upon… when my cell phone suddenly rang, and I had to fight the urge to wet myself as I gasped in fear and jumped in my seat! Who… Gingerly I picked up the jingling, vibrating rectangle and swiped the surface with my thumb, feeling nervous as I brought it to my ear. “H… Hello?” I asked, wincing at my falsetto little-girl voice.
“Leila?” The voice on the other end was a fraction deeper than mine but still undeniably female, and carried an eerie quality about it – almost as if I were hearing someone familiar through a crackling filter that had kicked it up a couple of octaves. “Is… is that you?”
I frowned as I put the television on mute, trying to place the voice – only to start with the sudden shock of recognition. “Midge?!?” I squeaked as I leaned forward and pressed the phone closer to my ear. Margaret ‘Midge’ Attlewood was one of my clients, a staple in the industry who seemed to have been around for decades and had a face that everyone knew, even if they didn’t quite know what she had done. A solid if unremarkable actress, she tended to alternate between supporting-supporting roles and voiceover work, and for the past three years had been the occasional guest-star playing a ‘youngish, sexually edgy grandmother’ on a basic-cable ensemble show. Her career hadn’t been spectacular, but she had developed a reputation as a steady and reliable worker – and the light, long-term demand for her services had allowed her to purchase a small apartment in the ‘poor’ section of Beverly Hills. Just hearing her voice, knowing that somebody I knew was still around, brought tears to my eyes and made me feel a tiny bit better. “Are you okay?” I asked as I tried not to cry with relief.
“No!” she sobbed miserably, her voice sort-of in between outrage and terror. “I’m a little girl again, a fucking little girl!!! What the hell is happening?!?”
“I don’t know! I…” I swallowed heavily and dug deep, trying to keep calm as her panicked tone cause my heart to pound in my chest. “I don’t know what’s going on.” Her mood was contagious and I felt a wave of terror wash over me again, and I folded my thin calves under my thighs as I shrank deeper into the cushions of the couch. “Where are you, right now?” I asked in a tiny voice.
“Home.” She sniffed a wet, slightly disgusting sniff of pure misery. I could hear her shift and the sound of movement in the background as she moved around her apartment. “What’s happened?” she repeated in a small, lost, plaintive tone.
“I don’t know,” I repeated. I tried to focus on Midge’s voice, falling back into ‘agent mode’ and using it as a crutch to bring my scattered brain back into some semblance of order – and to calm my own frayed nerves. “The news says it’s all over. It’s happening to everyone.”
“Are you…” She hesitated, and for a moment all I could hear was her panicked, labored breathing. “You sound… young,” she finally said.
At that I had to laugh, an ironic bark filled with just a touch of bitterness. “I am young, just like you. I think…” I took a deep breath, tried to steady my nerves, and finally said what I didn’t want to admit. “I look like I’m fucking six. I think I’m six years old. Again.”
“Me too.” The relief in her voice was palpable, almost as if the knowledge that someone she knew was undergoing the exact same horror as she. In the background behind her I could hear the sound of crashing metal, the noise muffled by the walls of her apartment and the sound of her breathing. She made a noise as if to say something but hesitated, and I could almost hear the wheels in her mind turning. “Are you…” she finally stammered in a tiny, embarrassed voice. “Do you feel like…”
A sudden flurry of movement caught my eye, and I turned my attention back to the television. “Wait a minute,” I interrupted as I grabbed the remote and turned the volume back up. “Turn on FNN,” I added in a strained, horrified voice as I moved to the edge of the couch and leaned forward, my attention fixed on the screen.
“… violent attacks are occurring across the city,” Ricketts reported. Instead of the newsroom the network was broadcasting a feed from what appeared to be a city security camera. At an intersection two police cruisers sat nose-to-nose and a pair of tiny figures in the distinctive blue uniforms of the NYPD crouched behind the bodies of their vehicles. A tall, half-nude teenager charged into the shot and the cops fired their weapons, sending bullet after bullet winging into the boy and sending him to the ground – but almost immediately another took his place. The cops fired again, but this one managed to push through the multiple bullet wounds on his body to lunge across the hood of a cruiser, leaving a smear of blood across the white hood. One of the cops took a step back but the teenager fell on the other, struggling with the policeman furiously. “Conditions are continuing to deteriorate,” the anchor continued over the scene, “as the NYPD is reporting multiple instances of individuals confronting law enforcement and assaulting their fellow survivors.” The standing intersection cop fired repeatedly at the boy and killed him, but the other policeman remained prone on the asphalt and as two more half-naked forms charged the remaining officer from behind the scene quickly cut back to the newsroom. Ricketts looked harried and almost stunned, almost as if he couldn’t imagine what was happening to his city. “We just lost our feed to One Police Plaza, and are trying to get it back. Jin?” he asked, his attention turning once more from the camera to just over my shoulder. “What’s that?”
“Are you watching this?” I whispered to Midge, not trusting myself to speak any louder.
“Oh my God, did you see that?” she whispered back. “They fucking took her down!!!”
“Her who?”
“That cop!” Midge’s voice was sounding panicked again, and I could feel my own fears beginning to bubble up once more. “It was a little girl, a fucking little girl, and that psycho just attacked her!”
There was a loud crash that made Ricketts jerk and stand. Jin scrambled next to him with a terrified look on her face as she peered to one side, and then the camera swung wildly and pointed at the girders and wires of the studio’s ceiling. A low, almost animal snarl was overlaid by a high-pitched feminine shriek, and a young male voice shouted as a gunshot rang out. The shriek grew higher in pitch as two more shots exploded, and then the picture went black, replaced by a sign announcing technical issues.
“What’s happening?” Midge repeated, her voice filled with horror.
I opened my mouth to reply… when suddenly there came a pounding at my front door!
