Saturday's Storyteller: No Prompt

by Belinda Roddie

Coffee hasn't tasted the same since the Retransformation. The cream doesn't exactly help - it almost seems to curdle as soon as it hits the brew, giving it an inconsistent texture and almost making it more bitter. Sugar makes it even worse, as if the stuff was intentionally burned.

I know this because before the Transformation, I drank my coffee black - all the time. Steaming hot, too, every morning. And it always woke me up like a punch to the throat. These days, not so much. I'm still exhausted after two or three cups. It doesn't taste the same. It doesn't feel the same. It's like I've grown an immunity to the effect. A resistance.

Maybe Red Bull or an energy shot would do me more wonders.

I'm ready to start the job hunt again by ten, just so I can rub the extra sleep out of my eyes. I've suffered from somnolence over the past two weeks, and for the first time in a while, I can wake up earlier than eleven in the morning. My roommate - an older guy named Jericho, who immigrated from Egypt - has already been at his software gig for three hours already. He gets up early and works late, so I don't see him very often. I get the feeling it's intentional; Hell, I'm sure that even if he did get out of work early, he'd have margaritas with his coworkers and stay out until midnight, anyway. Unlike me, he doesn't need much sleep. But he also hasn't been through what I've been through.

Yesterday, I applied for twenty-five jobs. Today, I plan to apply for another thirty.

My résumé isn't exactly the most detailed document you can find. I had a few odd jobs as a teenager, which included a brief three month stint at the local burger pit stop and a year or so working part time at a pizza arcade. The latter job was interesting because everyone in town loved it - arcades were going the way of the dinosaurs in other cities, but our town wouldn't let go of nostalgia even if it was repeatedly biting us on the ankles. Everyone from the east and west would swing by to play classic games - Space Invader, pinball, Super Mario, skee-ball, Street Fighter. We even had Rampage, which was one of my favorites to play during my fifteen minute break. I'd try to see how far I could go until I had to punch back in for the rest of my shift.

Yep. One of my favorite games was where I could play a giant monster wrecking an entire city building by building, skyscraper by skyscraper. And I always chose the werewolf character.

Funny, that.

I normally call my mom around noon, a little bit before I hop onto Craigslist and start scouring pages for jobs that match up with my minimal skill set and experience. The conversation is normally fairly mundane - what we're up to today, how her friends are doing, how my brother is doing, whether or not she's sending me another check. Today, she doesn't pick up her phone; it's surprising, but I don't probe it further. I know she's being kind by paying for my rent while I'm trying to start over, but I know the time is weighing on her. Six months of helping out with my livelihood is bound to drain the her patience. And her savings account.

I'm costing her a lot more than money, too, but I can't exactly make things better. Employers see my name on the application and ignore it. Or they call me up only to heavily question me on everything but the job. It's a different kind of interview, an interview that attacks my past with a scalpel, ready to peel away the skin and expose the mottled, spotted gray matter underneath. The parts of my brain that were salvageable after everything happened.

They ask me how I'm doing. How life is treating me. Now that everything's "normal." And then they ask me if I think it could happen again.

Regardless of the answer, they hang up.

***

It's hard to say what I looked like when I was the Monster, mostly because it's difficult to put into words. There are terrorizing reptilian titans like Godzilla, and massive apes like King Kong, and even wild-eyed wolf-like giants who attack on more than a full moon. Scales, mangy fur, big teeth - fangs. Claws. Powerful enough to crush a car, and to eat its alloy, too. Wild eyes.

It's the eyes that stand out to me. Because they were still mine.

The Transformation lasted six months, though for most of that, I was detained. I was kept away in a Guantanamo-like prison, with needles stuck in my Monstrous arms and my Monstrous neck while they drew my Monstrous blood daily. They did every medical treatment on me imaginable, not realizing that there was no real outside cause for it. It wasn't a virus. It wasn't contagious. It wasn't some magic spell cast on me when I was a child. It just...happened. Two months after my high school graduation. Two months after the moods started.

I was getting angrier faster, more frequently, scaring my parents with my tirades. I was also getting thinner, but more toned. I had always been a chubby kid, all the way through high school, but despite how much I was eating now, I was losing weight and gaining muscle. My metabolism went through the roof. My hair got mangier, my skin more speckled and discolored. I began to get hungrier and hungrier. Soon, human food didn't fit my appetite.

I remember the first time I ate an aluminum soda can out of the recycling bin.

It was amazing. It felt good on my new teeth.

The United States government managed to stop me from wrecking more than a third of my hometown. I had managed to destroy City Hall, the police station, and one of the fire department buildings. I had grown to over eleven feet tall, over a ton in weight. I chewed on pick-up trucks like they were steaks. I growled and spoke gibberish. I hadn't forgotten English; I just couldn't enunciate it anymore.

But I never demolished the arcade. Thank fucking God, huh?

It took five months for the Retransformation to happen. There wasn't exactly a catalyst for it - they just found me on the floor of my enormous cell, my hair long and still mangy, naked and shivering on the stone floor. And thin. Very, very thin.

I've gained some weight since then, but not much.

The military doctor put me on some sort of medication that's supposed to stabilize my body, as long as I take it every day. It's a huge ass pill; I sometimes have to break it in half in order to swallow it, and I can't eat food until thirty minutes after I've taken my dose. I can't drink soda out of a can anymore, and hearing a car rev outside sets my teeth on edge. My mouth gets the sensation like it's filled with cotton. The doctor says it's a side effect of the drug, but I still have to take it.

And of course, coffee's shit to me now, too.

I don't know why the Transformation happened. My parents don't know, either. They claim there were clues, hints they missed as I was growing up. Like I was pre-destined to turn into some sort of vile, destructive beast hellbent on causing chaos. I was eighteen when Hollywood banged on my door. I refused to sell them my life story for a biopic, so they produced films that copied parts of it that wouldn't allow me to sue them. And my dad watched them. All of them. People were confused when he cried at the climaxes.

You're not supposed to cry during action movies.

Now I'm twenty-one. I don't have friends. I don't drink alcohol because of my meds. I live with a middle-aged Egyptian man named Jericho and sleep in late and apply for jobs that I never get. And when I do go out, I only have one person to talk to.

Sheila.

A thirty-five-year-old waiter who works at the Penny Factory Dinner about a mile's walk away from my apartment.

And she always pours me a lemonade.

There was no prompt for this week's Storyteller. This has been a story idea I've been tossing around for a few days now, and I'm not sure if I want to expand it into a novel, a play, or a screenplay. If you are interested in seeing more, please feel free to let me know in the comments on my blog or my social media. Cheers.