CHAPTER 7
1006 Words
CHAPTER 7Merv had a much easier time sliding into the booth across from Prado now that he had the trim frame of the bearded mechanic. Prado’s gaze followed him as Merv settled in, picked up the latex gloves and slipped them over his hands. Neither man spoke. The only sound was the snap of the rubber against Merv’s newly calloused palms. Once gloved, he placed them on the table in front of him. In an unfamiliar deep voice, Merv said, “See what I mean? Morphing like a baby.”
Prado rubbed his chin, appeared to be considering a response, when Linda, the bartender, came over and delivered a mug of beer. “Your buddy take off?” She looked at Prado.
“I’m not sure if he’ll be back.” Prado turned to her, noticed she seemed concerned. “I’ve got the tab.”
“You need another pitcher?” she asked.
“Not right now. I’ll let you know.”
As she turned and walked toward the bar, Prado said, “Explain this to me. Explain it like you and I are from different worlds.”
Merv smiled and bobbed his head like a fat guy, extending his jaw to accommodate jowls that were no longer there. “Whatever you want, man. It’s like this. Normally when babies are born, they are amorphous. They can take the shape of whatever living thing they touch. You follow?”
“So far. Go on.”
“After they grow a little, learn to walk and talk, they imprint, usually on their parents, and the morphing stops. They take on the genetic aspects of one of their parents, usually the mother.”
“This is true of everyone? All babies are born like this?”
“Yeah, gooey little blobs of cells that usually take on Mom’s genome at birth and over a span of time imprint permanently. Mothers generally try to keep their kids away from plants and animals until this happens, but you know kids. They’ll turn into anything they can get their hands on.”
“This doesn’t normally happen to adults?”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“What’s the point of this morphing?”
“In high school biology they say it’s nature’s way of protecting offspring. If a baby gets separated from its parent, it can morph into something else as protection or to assure its survival.”
“Can it stay that way?”
“Theoretically it would be possible for a baby to imprint on a different specifies, but I’ve never heard of it being done, at least not in modern times. It would be kinda hard to tell, wouldn’t it? I mean, if a baby imprinted onto, say, a bear in the woods, it would just be a bear with bear DNA. Who would know?”
“You realize this isn’t normal, this morphing?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy for a grown man.”
“No, I mean babies don’t morph here. You have noticed that things are different since we were in the plane crash, right? Other than your morphing issue.”
“Well, yeah. There’s the dermatology stuff. The wife I never had. You know, when she kissed me at the hospital, I turned into her right there in the emergency room. She fainted on the spot. The place went crazy. Luckily I had cut my arm in the crash, and there was some of my blood on my shirt.”
“Why is that relevant?”
“’Cause how else would I turn back into myself? I had to lick my shirt. When I turned back, my wife fainted again, and the place went crazy again. The doctors and nurses were afraid to touch me, so I got up and walked out. It took me a couple days to figure out where I lived—by then I had morphed into several people and a dog. That reminds me . . .”
Merv dug into his pocket and pulled out a vial, unscrewed the cap and raised it to his lips. His lips thickened, and his face sagged, then expanded and filled out. The beard seemed to draw itself back into its follicles, and his skull shifted and broadened. The cheekbones and jawline sunk into adipose. The ears retracted. His shirt appeared to fill up, and his shoulder rounded. The leatherette-covered bench on which he sat exhaled some air, displaced by this growing girth.
Prado glanced around to see if anyone was watching. He noticed a security camera in the corner of the room pointed in their direction.
“That’s better. That guy had huge feet,” Merv said.
“What’s in that vial?”
“Blood. My blood. In case I have an accident. When that dog jumped on me, I barely had the wits to figure out how to get it out of my pocket. I had to crush the vile with my teeth. Couldn’t twist the cap with just paws.”
“You need to be careful.”
Merv didn’t notice Prado staring at the camera and missed his point. “You’re telling me. If I morph into something like a shrub, I’m not sure what I would do.”
“No, I mean where you do that, who may be watching.” Prado nodded to the camera.
“Oh, I see. I don’t think half those cameras work, and the video on the other half probably never gets looked at.”
“Back to how things seem different since the airliner went into the river.”
“Something changed me, affected me somehow. Maybe it had to do with those blue lights in the plane before it went down.”
“I don’t think only you changed. You said earlier that it seemed like we took off in one world and crashed in another. Based on what you’ve experienced and what I’ve observed, I gather that we all took off from different worlds and landed in this one.”
Merv looked at him blankly. “Different worlds.”
“Yes. I am out of place here too, but babies don’t morph in my world. Although I have noticed some other differences between this place and the world as I have always known it.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not a dermatologist, and I’m not a petty criminal. I don’t know you. And it appears people here bury their dead. Their bodies rot. They have these places, these cemeteries, graveyards, all over the place, full of rotting bodies,” Prado said, then his voice dropped an octave, and his lisp grew slightly thicker. “It’s very disconcerting.”
“Now I’m not following you,” Merv said.
“It doesn’t matter. I think it’s clear that we are both in a place where we don’t belong.”
“I guess this means our partnership is over, since you don’t even really know who I am.”
Prado narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet. I think I could work with someone having your particular skill set. Since we still need to make a living, it might be advantageous to forge a partnership after all, but it’s not going to be in dermatology.”
- Writer
