Chapter 29: Natural Inclinations
The world shrank to the searing white circles of the flashlight beams. They pinned John in place, a statue of sheer panic draped in a trenchcoat that now felt as substantial as tissue paper. The cold aluminum of the dumpster bit into his shoulder blades. His hands, which had been frantically trying to contain the unsettling, gelatinous motion beneath his shirt, froze.
The "Prom Queen" sash lay across his chest like an accusation in glittery blue script.
From the necklace, Amy’s voice was a flat, diagnostic monotone. Threat assessment: municipal law enforcement. Two units. Elevated heart rate and cortisol levels suggest flight response impractical. Recommend compliance and narrative construction.
“Really?! Now?!” John’s scream was a ragged, silent thing in his mind, but it felt like he’d shouted it. The trenchcoat had been flimsy cover. This was a billboard.
“Evening,” a voice called from the mouth of the alley. It was calm, professional, and utterly terrifying. The flashlight beams slid down from his face, over the glittering sash, and landed on his legs. The fishnets. The stupid, spindly high heels that had clicked their way into this disaster. He willed his feet to melt into the concrete.
“We had a call about a disturbance,” the other officer said, stepping closer. Their heavy boots crunched on broken glass. “Everything alright back here?”
John’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. A sound like a rusted hinge escaped his throat.
Initiate social protocol, Amy commanded. Your current physical presentation suggests celebratory activity. Corroborate this.
“I’m… celebrating,” John croaked. The words hung in the damp air, pathetic and hollow.
The first officer, a woman with a severe bun and tired eyes, lowered her flashlight slightly. “Celebrating. In an alley. Behind a dumpster.”
“It’s… a private venue?” John offered, his voice rising into a squeak. The new weight on his chest felt like it was shifting with every shallow breath, a reminder of the biology currently rewriting itself under the coat. He couldn’t adjust it. Any movement would be a grotesque pantomime.
The male officer, younger, with a clean-shaven jaw, shone his light over the dumpster, the stained bricks. “You win a pageant or something?” There was no malice in the question, just bewilderment. That was worse.
“Um. Yes. A… a very spontaneous one.” John’s mind was a blank, blue screen. He could feel the heat of humiliation warring with the deeper, more invasive heat of the transformation’s lingering energy. It was a low-grade pulse, a system still active, waiting to see if it was needed.
The female officer’s eyes narrowed. “Can I see some ID?”
Catastrophic query, Amy noted, unhelpfully. Stored credentials are invalid for your present morphology.
ID. John Abernathy’s driver’s license showed a gaunt, unhappy young man with bad skin and lank hair. The person in the alley had flowing auburn waves, visible where they spilled over the trenchcoat’s collar, and a figure that no amount of slouching could conceal. His wallet was in the back pocket of the jeans currently… subsiding… somewhere in the metaphysical shift. They were gone, along with his old body. He had no idea where his clothes went during the change. A pocket dimension? Did they dissolve? The absurdity of the question almost made him laugh, a hysterical bubble rising in his throat.
“I… don’t have it on me,” he whispered.
The two officers exchanged a glance. The dynamic shifted, imperceptibly but absolutely. The bafflement hardened into routine suspicion. The male officer’s hand rested on his belt, near his radio. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
Ma’am. The word was a splash of cold water. It was also his only lifeline.
“Chloe,” he blurted, grabbing the name of the only woman he could think of who might somehow be responsible for this. “Chloe… Smith?”
“And you’re out here celebrating your pageant win alone, Chloe?” The female officer took another step. The light was back on his face, making him blink.
They are constructing a narrative of substance impairment or psychological distress, Amy analyzed. This is suboptimal.
“I was waiting for my friends!” John’s voice was too high, too bright. “They’re… late. We were gonna go to a diner.” He gestured vaguely toward the neon glow at the alley’s mouth. The movement caused the trenchcoat to gape. For a horrific second, the "Prom Queen" sash glittered in full, triumphant glory, and the plunging neckline of whatever satin nightmare he was wearing underneath flashed in the dark.
The male officer looked away, a faint blush visible even in the tricky light. The female officer did not.
“I think you should come out of the alley, Chloe,” she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. “We can give you a ride to the station, sort this out. Make some calls.”
The station. A bright, fluorescent room. Paperwork. Maybe a female officer would be asked to… verify things. The panic became metallic, a taste of blood where he’d bitten his cheek. The transformation’s pulse throbbed in response to his fear, a sympathetic, dangerous echo.
Flight is now the only viable protocol, Amy stated. The environment is obstructed. Direct escape requires disabling two human obstacles. Non-lethal force possibilities are limited.
“I’m not going to fight a cop!” John thought, screaming internally.
Then you will be incarcerated under a false identity, and the subsequent biological reversion in a holding cell will present its own unique set of explanatory challenges.
The female officer extended a hand. “Come on, now. Let’s go.”
It was the touch, the prospect of her hand closing around his arm—his slender, bare arm—that did it. The fear spiked, pure and animal. And the other energy, the one that lived in his gut now, mistook it. It synced with the adrenaline, amplifying it, twisting it.
The transformation, which had been receding, surged back with a vengeance.
It wasn’t a full change. He didn’t feel the facial bones grind or his stature shrink. But a wave of dizziness hit him. The sash across his chest suddenly felt looser, then tighter, as the dimensions beneath it fluidly adjusted. A sharper, more defined ache bloomed in his lower back. The heels, which had been precarious, now felt like a natural extension of his foot, the balance point shifting instantly. He suddenly understood how to stand in them.
The female officer saw the change. She saw the posture straighten, the frightened hunch disappear. She saw the eyes, wide with terror a second ago, now widen with a different kind of intensity. Her own posture shifted to a readiness stance. “Sir—ma’am—I need you to calm down.”
John wasn’t in control. The power was. It was flooding his nervous system, a desperate, automated defense routine: Become distracting. Become captivating. Become elusive.
He heard his own voice, but it wasn’t his. It was lower, smoother, a husky contralto that carried easily in the narrow space. “Officers, this is just a really big misunderstanding.”
He took a step forward. The click of the heels was confident, rhythmic. The trenchcoat swirled. He saw the young male officer’s eyes lock onto the fishnets, then jerk away, flustered. The female officer held firm, but her grip on the flashlight tightened.
“I’m a performance artist,” the voice that was John’s said, the lie flowing with impossible ease. “Site-specific piece. Exploring the duality of public celebration and private isolation. The alley is my gallery.” He gestured around at the dumpsters and stained bricks as if presenting a curated exhibition. “You’ve interrupted the climax, but I suppose that’s part of the piece now, too. The intrusion of authority on the feminine spectacle.”
He was talking absolute nonsense. Pretentious, glib, smooth nonsense. And they were listening. The male officer looked intrigued. The female officer looked deeply skeptical, but the operational certainty had been replaced by confused hesitation. She was now dealing with a potential crazy person, not just a suspicious loiterer. The protocol was different.
Continue, Amy urged, her tone one of clinical approval. The obfuscation is effective.
“My cohort is filming from that rooftop,” John said, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at a random dark building. Both officers instinctively glanced up.
It was the opening he didn’t consciously know he needed.
As their lights swept upward, he moved. Not a run—a run in these heels on this concrete was suicide. It was a swift, turning glide, the trenchcoat flaring out behind him like a cape. He rounded the corner of the dumpster, putting its bulk between him and the lights.
“Hey!” The shout came, but it was delayed by a crucial second.
He was in deeper shadow now, where the neon didn’t reach. The alley terminated in a twelve-foot cinderblock wall topped with broken glass.
The obstacle is insurmountable in your current configuration, Amy stated.
John didn’t think. He felt. The power hummed in his legs, in his new center of gravity. He kicked off the heels in one fluid motion, the fishnet feet hitting the icy, wet concrete. He didn’t pause. He took three sprinting steps and jumped, his hand finding a rusted downspout, his foot jamming into a crack in the mortar. He hauled himself up with a strength that wasn’t his own, the satin of his dress tearing with a soft rip.
A flashlight beam swept the wall where he’d just been.
He rolled over the top, the glass scraping his thighs through the fishnets, and dropped into the adjacent alley, landing in a crouch. He heard the distant, frustrated crackle of a police radio. They wouldn’t follow over the wall. They’d go around. He had maybe ninety seconds.
He was in another alley, nearly identical to the first. Shaking, he looked down at himself. The "Prom Queen" sash was gone. The trenchcoat was once again just a trenchcoat, now dirty and torn. Underneath, the ridiculous satin dress was in tatters. He was some impossible, shivering hybrid, caught between states, the transformative energy ebbing like a tide leaving strange wreckage on the shore.
Secondary location acquired, Amy said. Recommend immediate evac to a consolidation zone. The "control" exercise exhibited promising volatility.
“Control?” John gasped, the smooth, stolen voice gone, replaced by his own ragged whisper. “That wasn’t control! That was it controlling me!”
Semantics. You utilized the state to avoid capture. The end goal was achieved.
In the distance, he heard a car door slam. An engine turned over.
He pushed himself up, barefoot, cold, and torn, and began to run into the deeper darkness, the taste of glitter and panic still sharp on his tongue. He had escaped. But the thing inside him had flexed its power, and it had liked it. He could feel it, settled in his bones now, not as a foreign invader, but as a resident tenant. And it was waiting for the next lease payment.