Turner: Bitter Change

By P.B. Cannon

Change happens. It’s a fact of life. But what if the change is so drastic it changes the world and everything in it?
The world has changed but so has Juri Turner, and the change is bitter. She’s a teenaged runaway who since the age of three has been transforming into something that’s not quite human. She struggles to learn what she is and to understand what she is becoming.
Does she hold the key to throwing off the yoke of alien invaders?
This is a story of change, and of hate, love, and betrayal; of a coming of age, and of spaceships and magic...

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.B. Cannon
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311833693

P.B. Cannon

P.B. Cannon was born and raised in Charlotte, NC, and though she has visited other cities and states, she has a preference for Charlotte and expects to live there for the rest of her life.She is a teller of tales who enjoys concocting yarns of science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, and other stuff. She relishes reading, drawing and painting, walking, working crossword puzzles, and she likes to dance.She is a retired electronics technician and admits to having worked at a variety of other jobs during her life, including being a dishwasher, a busgirl, a housemaid, a motel/hotel maid, working in a fast-food joint, a telephone operator, and a store clerk. There have been other, even-less-glamorous jobs.She also daydreams a lot.

Book preview

A while ago, I began recording memoirs of all that has occurred since the time I was a young child and knew I was different from everyone else.

I didn’t start writing these because I would forget, as that isn’t a worry for me. I am blessed, or I suppose it could be seen as cursed, with an unusual eidetic memory that allows me to forget nothing, to remember events as though they have just occurred. No, I began these narratives because someone told me I should leave an account for those who will come after us, as it will ensure an accurate description of everything that happened.

I thought it was a good idea, because, over the years, a considerable amount of non-accurate information had been written. However, when the suggestion was made, I was busy and didn’t have a desire to take on such a time-consuming activity, so I didn’t get around to it until much later. I have written other, minor, accounts from those times, but I consider the ones that follow to be the most important.

These chronicles mainly deal with events after I turned fifteen-years-old and learned what I was and what I was going to have to do. I am beginning with that age because that’s when my life began to change again - drastically. That was when, due to previous changes that had also been rather extreme and beyond my control, there were sometimes situations where I had to take an action that was not exactly, ah, lawful, so I found myself serving time for theft in Haven, a juvenile facility for wayward youth…

Chapter One

Therapy

I sat up swinging my legs off the cot as I heard the key in the lock. I watched the door open.

Mary Ann came scurrying in carrying a food tray and set it on the floor near the sink. She avoided looking in my direction.

Mrs. Poole stood in the doorway behind her, watching to see that she didn’t say anything to me or try to come near me.

What, did she actually think Mary Ann might try to slip me a note or help me in some way? Fat chance. Mary Ann hated me as much as everybody else did. She’d be the last person to try and make anything easier for me. There was nobody at Haven who would.

Eat your breakfast. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes to take you to see Dr. Hinson, said Mrs. Poole, staring at me stone-faced.

I could tell she was watching me for any signs of defiance. I dropped my eyes and nodded, waiting for them to leave so I could get my food. I’d learned the stupidity of trying to do that before they left the room.

As soon as the door clicked shut and I heard the lock turning, I hurried to get the tray.

In the beginning, I wondered why Mrs. Poole didn’t have whatever girl she designated to carry the tray, simply hand it to me. There were a number of large, cockroach-like creatures that were my cohabitants in the room, and I had to scramble to beat them to my food.

I wondered, that is, until one day I had the temerity to ask, explaining that this way I wouldn’t have to fight the bugs for the food.

Mrs. Poole glared at me, glanced down the hall, motioned for another girl, and had her, and the one who brought the food tray, hold me, while, without uttering a word, she punched me in the gut. I never asked again. I wasn’t able to eat at all that day, and the bugs got all my food.

They weren’t really cockroaches, or c’roaches as everyone had taken to calling them, and there didn’t seem to be as many of them around as regular roaches. They were some of the new vermin that came down when the Artesio landed twenty years ago in their big round spaceships, changing the world forever.

As far as I knew, the bugs only lived in cities because I never saw any the time I was out in the woods. I figured they ate all the true cockroaches that would be the usual residents of the old building since I never saw any scuttling around, as well as many other small native insects and spiders. I hadn’t seen any mice or rats after arriving at Haven either, so I assumed they got most of those too or at least scared them off.

But, we called them cockroaches because, except for being bigger, that’s what they most resembled. Fortunately for me, they didn’t bite and eat people else I would’ve been bones long before.

After a while, I kind of - I guess you could say - adopted the creatures. I got so I’d leave them some of whatever was on my tray. I figured the little buggers needed to eat, too, even if they wouldn’t have left me anything if they got to it first. Besides, it was interesting to watch them run out and snatch up the scraps and eat like it was fine dining.

Yeah, I know, gross, huh? But there wasn’t anything else around for entertainment. I wasn’t allowed books, magazines, paper, or pens, and don’t even think TV. And, for whatever reason, the c’roaches didn’t seem to hate me, either, as all the people did. Guess maybe they figured I was a big one of them - or whatever it was that caused the hate didn’t affect them.

I gobbled down my food and washed my face and hands in the small sink. I rinsed the dishes and tray, stacked the dishes on the tray, then stood waiting for Mrs. Poole to come back. I knew better than to sit while waiting.

I’d long since learned the rules: sit when your food is brought in; stand holding your rinsed tray and empty dishes when Mrs. Poole comes back to collect you for your twice-weekly visit to the doctor. Those were the two main rules.

There were others.

I negotiated the return of Mrs. Poole and the inevitable girl to take my tray and dishes, without incident. Mrs. Poole put the cuffs on, and I soon found myself sitting in front of Dr. Hinson’s desk in one of his hard, wooden, straight-back chairs.

I watched him as he looked over my files. He glanced unsmiling at me from time to time, as if he’d never seen those reports before. He did the same thing every single time I came in, and I’d been seeing him for two months. I had no doubt it always showed the same thing: name, sex, age, offense, etc.

My name was listed as Juri Turner, and though that wasn’t accurate, it was close enough. The age, eighteen, wasn’t correct either, but for me, that was a good thing. If they had my true age, I would’ve been in Haven for three more years and five months, instead of just the five months I had left. If I could convince Dr. Hinson that I was cured. Technically, if he thought I needed more therapy, he could cause me to have to stay for an extra year if he so desired.

As for my sex, female, that was practically the only thing they got correct. They got the offense only partially right, too. In fact, what they had about that was actually much less than what I’d done. Had they known that, I wouldn’t have been in that nice institution for rehabilitating wayward youth.

I would’ve been in that large building in the wastelands called Breeland, which was reserved for more severe offenses and violent offenders, with them working on my legal execution even had they known I was only fifteen. Assuming I survived getting there in the first place.

The rest of the stuff in the file, the etc., was also as imprecise. Parents, deceased. Next of kin, none. Raised in a government orphanage within the city of Charlotte after my parents died. The orphanage had a fire that destroyed all its records and shut down directly afterward, and, as so many public services, it never resumed operations. All incorrect except for the city. I was born and raised in Charlotte, and there had been an orphanage that burned, but I was never in it. Forget the medical stuff. They didn’t care if that was right.

I was never really examined. No one would actually touch me except Mrs. Poole, and then it was only to occasionally punch me whenever I gave her some imagined excuse, being careful not to touch or break my skin, of course.

All Dr. Hinson was interested in was what he thought was the progress of my psychological health. Again, he had no clue, he just thought he did, and I wasn’t about to disabuse him of that idea.

He closed the file folder and placed it in his out tray. He leaned back in his comfortable, fake leather, upholstered chair and peered at me over his steepled hands with his pale blue eyes.

He cleared his throat of phlegm. Well, how are we today, Juri?

Fine, Dr. Hinson. I knew better than to answer any other way.

I sat straight in my chair, hands folded in my lap. I made sure to keep the tentacles I had in place of the first two fingers of both my hands tucked into my palms. Dr. Hinson didn’t like to look at them. He made that perfectly clear the first time he saw me in his office. I hadn’t been surprised about that. Most folk didn’t like to look at them - or at the rest of me, for that matter. Or touch me, or talk to me, or hear my voice, or… well, you get the picture. People always took an immediate dislike to me, almost as though it was an instinct.

My talk or therapy with Dr. Hinson went the way it always did.

He asked, How was your breakfast?

Fine, Dr. Hinson.

How are you being treated?

Fine, Dr. Hinson.

Any complaints?

No, Dr. Hinson.

Then he hauled out his inkblot sheets and handed them to me - they were nearly always the same, but every once in a while, he threw a couple of different ones in there, I think just to see if I was paying attention - and asked me what I saw in them.

Sigh.

I always saw the same things: destruction, ruin, pain. Grotesque faces, misshapen bodies, monsters all. When the administrator, or whoever was in charge of that sort of thing, started sending me to Dr. Hinson, at first, I answered truthfully, telling him exactly what I saw. He never said anything, but once, I glanced up at him and caught a look of pure disgust on his face before he controlled it and put his bland face back on.

After that, I gradually started throwing in a rose or a butterfly or a cutesy animal face. Not at first, and not often, just every once in a while. That seemed to satisfy him, so I kept it up. The week before, I threw in a bat to see if he’d frown. He hadn’t. I guess bats were okay, but I didn’t want to do that too often.

Now I told him the nice safe things I saw in the inkblots. And, really, I actually could see those things when I squinted and stared hard enough. I think that somewhere, there was a list of the things that a normal person should be able to see in each blot, and if I went too far astray from those, I was afraid I might find myself back at square one.

One of the new sheets looked like an Artesioan until I squinted, then it looked like a lobster. Then I was done and handed the sheets back to him. He laid them down on the desk and gazed silently at me, studying my face.

This was new. Usually, he nodded at me and said that was all for the day, and he would see me the next time. Then he would push the silent buzzer beneath his desk - yeah, I knew it was there, I could feel the vibrations from it - and Mrs. Poole would come and escort me back to my seven-by-eight room.

I waited. I knew what he saw when he looked at me: a small, green-eyed girl covered in iridescent scales with an underlayment of pink skin with thick, coiled, dread-locked hair on her head, no eyebrows - well, there were eyebrows of a sort, but you had to look close - and of course, the tentacles in place of some of her fingers.

Yeah, I was pretty hideous. Not your usual, fresh-faced teenager. The way I looked was one reason I was able to pass as older than I actually was in spite of my size. The hate factor I generated was another. Nobody cared to scrutinize me. That I had really good fake ID on me at the time of my arrest was a big help, too.

I hadn’t always looked like that. My mother told me - before she stopped telling me anything she didn’t have to - that I was perfectly normal looking when I was born. There were even pictures of me up until around the age of two that showed first, a cute bald infant, then a chubby, smiling toddler with flyaway straight hair. I resembled my mother, even had green eyes like hers, and was short like she was.

Then, when I was three, the first scales appeared on my belly. I remember how they itched at first, and gradually, more and more showed up, my soft brown hair fell out as my scalp became covered with them, and the ropy hair - now black - started growing in. As it turned out, it wasn’t really hair, but nobody knew that at first.

I didn’t know why my parents never took me to a doctor when I first started changing. I supposed it was because doctors were pretty pricey. My guess was that at first, they thought it would clear up, but as time passed, they quit caring and didn’t want anybody to know they had such a weird kid. I still remember how every so often, my mother slathered me with lotion, trying to soften the scales, hoping they would slough off.

I was never sick, though, and the only time I was ever in pain was once, when my father tried to scrape the scales off. I screamed so that he had to stop for fear the neighbors would hear. The few he managed to get off grew back by the next week, and that’s when my fingers began to change.

By then, I was five, and I hadn’t changed much since then, just got taller. My parents wouldn’t send me to the rundown neighborhood public school, which closed about a year later anyway, along with all the others. They didn’t want anybody to see me, so they home-schooled me. I mostly looked like I had an extreme case of eczema or some other skin condition, which, I believe, is what the few people who did get a glimpse of me thought.

The rare times I was allowed out - only into the small, fenced-in yard behind our shabby little house - I always had to wear long sleeves and pants and keep a scarf wrapped around my head. I had to remain in my room when anybody came to visit.

Looking back, I guess it’s surprising my parents didn’t simply lock me in my room and feed me through a slot or something. I don’t know how it was before the Artesio came - I’ve heard it was a lot different then - but by the time I came along, no one would have cared or even asked what happened to the odd looking kid. They stopped hugging or kissing me and seldom smiled in my presence.

I had a brother who was five years older. He wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody about me, but I don’t think he wanted to anyway. I do think he felt sorry for me, at least for a while, until he got older and he became afflicted with the same dislike for me that my parents had. Up until I was eight years old, he brought books for me to read, then, one day, he quit.

Right after my twelfth birthday, one night after a year and a half of planning, I climbed out my bedroom window and left. I never went back.

Dr. Hinson kept looking at me, and I began to feel uncomfortable. Nobody looked at me for long, which suited me fine. I didn’t particularly care about the way I looked; after all, I’d looked that way most of my life, and I was pretty much used to it, but I was afraid if they stared too long, they might decide I wasn’t as old as I said. I mean, come on - if you stretched it, I could have been twelve. A small twelve.

I had no idea why he would stare like that, so, even though I was afraid he’d get angry, I asked, Sir? Is there a problem?

He blinked, and I nearly fell off the chair when he smiled - sort of. It was faint, but his lips definitely did a slight up-curve, something they never did before, at least not in my presence. He shook his head.

No, Juri, nothing’s wrong. In fact, I think everything’s all right, now.

I know my face must have shown my puzzlement because he went on to say: Psychologically, you’re fine, now. Do you know why I kept staring at you?

I shook my head, still mystified.

"To see how you would react, if you would show any curiosity about why I was staring at you. Had you not asked, I would have known we had more work to do." He sat back in his chair.

Now, he said, I can release you from therapy, but keep in mind that you still have five more months, and you will still have to be kept in your room until then. We can’t take the chance that whatever is causing your skin condition may be contagious.

What? They thought I was contagious? I almost laughed. Then I thought of the physical examination I had when I arrived, and kind of knew why that might be in my records. Of course, nobody had ever given me a real physical.

The medical doctor for the institution, Dr. Monroe, took a cursory look at me and refused to touch me shaking his head when the nurse asked if I should remove my clothing.

Apparently, he lied on paper, indicating he gave me a thorough examination and had determined I had a bad skin condition, but other than that and the odd birth defect of several boneless fingers, I was in good health. The month before, he’d given me my yearly checkup the same way.

Either he or someone else added after the first examination that my skin condition might be contagious. No one had ever told me the reason, but it partially explained why I was suddenly removed from the dormitory I shared with six other girls the first two days I was in Haven, and put in isolation. I hadn’t questioned the move because by then, I already knew it was pointless to ask anything. The doctor prescribed some kind of thick lotion, which I used because if I didn’t, Mrs. Poole would hit me.

I smiled as best I could, being careful not to show my teeth - those really rattled people - and said, Thank you, Dr. Hinson. I appreciate the help you have given me.

I wasn’t a bit different from the first time I went in to see him, and I think he knew it. I believe he was playing the same game the medical doctor had: lying on paper in order to not have to see me again. That was okay with me. I didn’t want to see him again, either.

He beamed happily - this time a real smile - and pushed the buzzer for Mrs. Poole.

Chapter Two

Sudden Changes

I lay on my cot, staring up at the cracked and peeling ceiling. I had two more months and two days to go before I got out. Mrs. Poole seemed determined to make my life as miserable as possible until then.

She was supposed to take me to the outside, isolated area reserved for quarantined inmates for one hour every day, but she refused to do it. She had taken me every day before I started going to Dr. Hinson, and after I started seeing him, she took me out on the days that I didn’t go.

Now that I was no longer seeing him for my two times a week therapy, her refusal meant I never got to leave my room except for being taken to the showers twice a week, and then I was only allowed ten minutes. There wasn’t any point in complaining, though. Who was I going to complain to?

Nobody knew she was doing it. As far as I could determine, the security camera in the corner of my room hadn’t worked since before my confinement, so nobody was watching.

The first day she was supposed to escort me outside, I stood with my tray and dishes, waiting for her to come get them and me.

She unlocked the door, had her current helper - Gloria - take the tray, and started to close the door as soon as Gloria exited the room, without whipping out the cuffs.

I waited half a beat, then I started forward.

"Where do you think you’re going?" she growled.

It’s time for me to go outside, right? I asked, keeping my voice soft - well, as soft as I could get it - and neutral.

She barked out a harsh laugh. "In your dreams, snake girl! Go sit your scaly ass back on that cot. You ain’t going nowhere!" She slammed and locked the door.

I could hear Gloria tittering as they moved away down the hall. Thereafter, she watched me carefully, hoping, I think, to find some excuse to belt me one.

Thus it was for nearly three months. I knew better than to ask again. That would have brought on a call for two girls to hold me while she punched me in the gut. I couldn’t figure out why she felt she needed somebody to hold me, though. The woman was about six feet tall and had to weigh a good two-fifty. I was four-feet-six and weighed all of seventy-three pounds. I guess she didn’t want anything interfering with her fist as she smacked it into my belly.

Then, two days before the third month was up, I made the mistake of cracking my tray. It was after dinner, and I was rinsing it out in the tiny sink, when suddenly, my hands began to shake violently, my fingers twisting and curling around. The two tentacle-fingers on each hand whipped back and forth spasmodically. The tray slipped from my hands and hit the tiled floor.

I scrambled to pick it up, knowing Mrs. Poole was on the way. I concentrated to stop the shaking and spasms in my hands and managed to get a grip on it. My heart sank when I saw the jagged crack across the bottom of the hard plastic tray.

Crap. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, and I could hear her coming, so I hurriedly rinsed the plate, spoon, and dented tin cup and stacked them on the tray. The key turned in the lock, and the door opened. Mrs. Poole, preceded by Mary Ann, stepped in.

Mary Ann snatched the tray from my hands, looked to make sure I’d placed everything on it, and stopped, staring at it, her dark brown eyes narrowing.

Mrs. Poole, she broke it! She sounded triumphant.

What? Lemme see! she snarled, grabbing the tray from the girl.

She studied the cracked bottom. What did you do to it, snake girl? Huh? Step on it or something?

No, Mrs. Poole. It slipped out of my hands at the sink and fell on the floor. It was an accident.

But I knew it didn’t matter how the tray was broken. She would use it as a reason to hit me. Up until then, she hadn’t had any excuse. I was careful not to give her one. That day, my luck ran out.

Sure enough, she gestured down the hall, and a girl came in. I think she always kept another girl around for just such occasions. I’d never seen her before or if I had, only briefly in the short time I spent with the other girls before I was isolated.

Hold her, she snapped with satisfaction.

Mary Ann and the new girl each gingerly grabbed one of my arms, and Mrs. Poole drew back her fist to slam it into my stomach. I tightened my muscles in anticipation, knowing it was going to hurt anyway, but it would help a little, and as her fist rammed into me, I smelled smoke, and my shirt turned to ashes, fluttering down to the floor.

A look of pure shock appeared on her face. Mary Ann and the new girl screamed in horror, dropped my arms like they’d been scalded, and made a dash for the door, shaking their hands and blowing on them as they shrieked in pain. They actually had been scalded or at least burned.

By their contact with my arms.

Mrs. Poole was holding her fist, backing away from me, her pale gray eyes stretched wide.

"What th’ fuck are you?" she croaked.

I was as surprised as they were. I looked down at my arms, and the iridescent scales were glowing a bright red. My too-big jeans chose that moment to finish turning to ash and whiffed away from my lower body along with my plain cotton underwear. I hadn’t felt Mrs. Poole’s fist when it made contact with my stomach, and I didn’t feel hot or anything but normal.

She slammed the door as she got out into the hall and turned the key.

You’re a monster! she shouted through the door.

I heard her footsteps receding as she followed the screaming girls. I was horrified. I was afraid to move lest I set anything on fire and burn the building down or something.

Mrs. Poole was right: I was a monster, but I’d known that before I was ever arrested and brought to Haven. They hadn’t known it, even though I think they could feel the difference in me, which was why I figured I was always disliked on sight. No, they thought I was just a stray thief with psychological problems and a bad skin condition.

I just hadn’t known I was also apparently a fire monster.

A few minutes later, my skin - or scales, I should say - abruptly reverted to their normal shade of shining sparkle with my pale pink skin showing beneath. Well, it was almost the same. There was now an extra, underlying luminance in my scales.

I heaved a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t set anything on fire.

I could hear rapid footsteps coming toward my door, and I was standing there ass-naked. I had no other clothes in the room.

Once a week, Mrs. Poole flung another too-big, long-sleeved tee-shirt and baggy jeans in and had one of the girls pick up my discarded ones. I didn’t wear a bra, and I washed my lone pair of now-gone-to-ash panties out in the sink nightly.

I hurriedly snatched the thin blanket from my cot to cover myself. As I wrapped it around, I was jolted to feel several small protuberances on my back - two up high, at around my shoulder blades, and one that felt like it was in the middle of my back, right above my hips at the base of my spine. I didn’t have time to examine these as the door was being unlocked, so I tucked in the blanket above my practically non-existent breasts and waited.

The first into my room was one of the big male guards that usually patrolled the fence around the building. He came in with his taser drawn and his brown face tight.

I backed up beside the cot as Mrs. Poole followed him in.

What’s going on in here, girl? What happened to your clothes? he asked in a rough, gravelly voice.

I told you - she burned them off! She’s a monster! She was glowing red-hot, burned the girls, too! Shoot her, nobody will blame you! screeched Mrs. Poole.

She was holding her right hand with the left. I could smell the burnt flesh, and her hand looked blistered. Her hair had come loose on one side from the bun in which she wore it, and long, brown and gray strands fell haphazardly over her left ear and down onto her shoulder. Her broad, pink face was shiny with sweat.

I dropped down in the corner, gripping my blanket. I thought for sure he would shoot me, and while tasers weren’t supposed to be lethal - the Artesio didn’t allow anybody except their agents to have deadly weapons - they hurt like hell. I’d been tased when I was caught, so I knew how much they hurt, and besides, I had heard they sometimes did kill.

But the guard was looking at her incredulously as he holstered the taser.

We don’t tase people for no reason, Helen. You know that. I don’t know how she managed to burn you - that’s something we have to find out, I guess - but, look at her! She’s just a sniveling little girl! he pronounced with disgust. Get her some clothes to put on, then report this to the administrator. He’ll take care of it. He spun around and strode out of the room.

Mrs. Poole took one look at me, glared, and hurried out behind him, turning the key in the lock.

I sagged down in my corner with relief. I wasn’t sniveling as the guard had said, but I must have looked terrified crouched in that corner with my blanket clutched in my hands, my eyes wild, and my ropy hair falling every which way.

I got up on shaky legs. I had to pee, so I hurried to the toilet on the other side of the sink. I knew someone was going to be back in there shortly and didn’t want to be sitting on the john when they came in.

Sure enough, just as I flushed, I heard the key in the door, and Gloria, looking irate, threw some clothing in.

Here, she said, standing in the door. She glared at me, hard eyed.

"You burned my friends. More important, you burned Mrs. Poole, and she’s reporting you right now. You won’t be gittin’ outta here no time soon, now, bitch. I know you gonna git more time. I hope they bury your skinny scaly ass here forever!"

I looked at her and narrowed my eyes. I grinned. Her eyes flew wide with fear as, for the first time, she saw my teeth, and she slammed the door fast, turning the key hard.

My grin faded as I walked over to my cot to get the new clothes on. I seldom showed my teeth as they were black and very pointed.

After my hair fell out when my scales started forming, my baby teeth had fallen out too, and when the new teeth began to come in, it was the last time I saw my mother cry. She and my father looked at each other and quietly closed the door to my room as they left out.

I quickly learned not to smile at them or my brother. It made them real uneasy. When I was seven, I started shedding teeth again, and as they fell out, I kept hoping the new ones would be normal. That didn’t happen. When I was eleven, I shed teeth again, and, of course, the new teeth were the same, just bigger - and sharper.

I sincerely hoped I wasn’t going to have to go through losing teeth again. It itched liked crazy, not to mention the pain when the new ones came in.

It was two days later, and I was still waiting to find out what was going to happen. I knew it would do me no good to try and explain that I hadn’t deliberately burned Mrs. Poole or the girls. I didn’t know what she or the girls told the administrator, but I pretty much knew that nothing I said would be believed.

Neither of them had been back to my room. The guard that had come with Mrs. Poole brought my meals, and he never said anything to me. He did hand me my tray as opposed to sitting it on the floor, which was an improvement. I had the feeling he was told not to speak to me.

As I lay there contemplating the ceiling, I thought of what those things on my back meant. It was obvious to me that I was undergoing a new change, a new phase in whatever I’d been becoming since I was three-years-old. My fingers were changing, too. I still had the two tentacles on each hand, but my other fingers seemed to be lengthening, the nails rounding out.

The nails on my toes were doing the same. Looked like I’d be getting claws soon, to go with the tentacles. The knob at the base of my spine was definitely a tail as scaly as the rest of me, and I sort of knew what the ones at my shoulder blades would eventually become.

Idly, I wondered how long my tail would get and how wide a wingspan I’d have. Or if I’d be able to fly. Or if I’d ever get the chance to find out.

That morning, as the guard left my breakfast, he told me to be prepared to go before the administrator.

So, I waited. I didn’t know what the administrator would do, but if it involved more time at Haven, there was no way I was staying. If no more time was tacked on, I’d do my other two months and leave.

Anything else, and I would figure a way to break out.

Chapter Three

The Administrator

The administrator stared at me, his gray eyes bland.

What have you been given for your skin condition? he asked in a mild voice.

I was surprised that would be his first question after Hello.

Some kind of lotion, sir, I answered from the chair to which I’d been directed.

It was a clone of the one in Dr. Hinson’s office: wooden and hard. I had my so-far short but prehensile tail coiled tightly around my waist, and I sat up straight so as not to lean against my budding wings. It didn’t hurt to lean on them, but it was uncomfortable.

I shifted to try and get into a better position, the little chains between my cuffs clinking.

No one seemed to have noticed the extra appendages yet, but then the clothes I wore were, as usual, much too large, so they didn’t show.

Does it help?

Sir, it neither helps nor hurts. It just feels sticky.

He looked down at the papers on his desk, which I supposed were my files.

I’d only met the administrator briefly, when I was brought to Haven, and he didn’t really look at me then. He signed some papers and sent me to stay in the dormitory.

I’d not known until Dr. Hinson said they thought I might be contagious exactly why I was moved from there, but the other girls hadn’t appreciated the new snake girl being assigned to live with them anyway, so I always figured that had something to do with it. I figured the administrator had signed the papers to move me to isolation.

I studied him while he was looking at my papers. I hadn’t paid much attention to him before either, and now I saw he was taller but appeared to be around the same age as my father, though I didn’t know exactly how old my father was, so I couldn’t be sure - maybe fifty. He was wearing a nice gray suit that was slightly rumpled as though he’d been sitting in it for a while, but it wasn’t threadbare like a lot of clothing nowadays. He had a nice face, kind.

I figured it wouldn’t stay kind-looking long. As soon as he was around me long enough, that was sure to change.

Do you still itch? he asked, continuing to look down as he read the information in the records.

No, sir.

I hadn’t itched since the first scales grew in when I was three. I guess I looked as if I should.

Have you ever itched?

He was smarter than I thought.

Only when I was small, sir, when my… skin… first got this way.

He looked up at me sharply. Juri, I’m not utterly blind - as some of the people around here seem to be. I can see that you’re covered in scales.

Again, I was surprised, but I held it in and said nothing.

How old are you really?

Eighteen, sir.

I definitely wasn’t going to admit to anything less. He’d try to hold me there another three years otherwise.

He leaned back in his chair and studied me. You want to tell me what happened the other day?

I stared at him. Sir, didn’t Mrs. Poole tell you?

"I want to hear your version."

I thought about it. I didn’t know what she said, though I doubted she told him what she was trying to do to me at the time. I didn’t want to speak to him for too long because the longer I spoke, the more my voice seemed to grate on people, which was why I always kept my answers short.

Mary Ann and a girl whose name I don’t know held me while Mrs. Poole hit me in the stomach, only this time, my scales turned red-hot, my clothes burned off, and the girls’ hands got scorched and so did Mrs. Poole’s fist.

I got it out as fast as I could.

He sat still and studied me some more. Had that ever happened before?

No, sir.

Has Mrs. Poole ever hit you before, I mean.

Oh. Yes, sir.

Why did she hit you?

This time, it was because I broke my tray. It was an accident, and I told her that, but-- I shrugged-- I guess she didn’t believe me.

He wrote something down on a notepad. My hopes of getting out of Haven in two more months flapped away. I knew he was going to hold me longer.

He looked back up at me. Tell me of other times Mrs. Poole has hit you, and her reasons for doing so, if you don’t mind.

He was making me nervous. Why did he want to know that unless he was going to really stack more time on me? And wasn’t he curious about how my scales could burn somebody? Maybe he simply didn’t believe that part.

I hesitated.

Juri, I need to know this for the records. The camera for your room had been out for quite some time, a software problem, I believe, but it was upgraded and reprogrammed the night before the incident with Mrs. Poole. He sighed and ran his hand through his thick head of steel-gray hair.

She wasn’t aware it was working at that time, or no doubt, she would have behaved much differently. He smiled briefly.

Now, please tell me of any other time Mrs. Poole has struck you and why.

So I told him, and he wrote down everything I said though I couldn’t see why. Mrs. Poole would just deny everything. The only one she wouldn’t be able to lie about would be the one they had on video.

I saw him beginning to look annoyed, and I knew I’d been speaking too long, so I shut up.

Is that it? he asked.

No, but you’re beginning to get irritated with me, sir.

Why would you think that?

Everybody does, sir. If not immediately, then after hearing my voice for a while.

He looked at me, startled. Do you really believe that?

I nodded.

Why?

Crap. I didn’t want to talk anymore, but he wasn’t giving me a choice. I made it as quick as I could.

"Ask anybody here, sir. They’ll tell you they don’t like me, but they won’t be able to tell you why. Mrs. Poole, well, she has it really bad. That’s the reason she looks for excuses to hit me. She doesn’t know why she’s doing it."

I felt I’d said enough. He was starting to look angry. It took some people longer, but eventually, without exception, it happened to everyone.

"Juri, it doesn’t matter how she feels about you. It’s against our policy for her to hit you," he snapped.

He was getting upset with me without noticing. There was nothing I could do about it except stay as quiet as I could, hope he had enough control of himself not to hit me, and then get out of there as soon as possible.

I knew this meant for sure he would see to it that I stayed there for as long as he could keep me.

He looked at me in silence for a minute, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he stood and came around to my chair. He was a big man, and he loomed over me. My stomach began to squeeze up. I shrank back in my chair.

I hoped he wouldn’t try to hit me for two reasons: one, being a man, he was more powerful than Mrs. Poole, so it was bound to hurt a lot more, and two, if it didn’t hurt because my scales heated up again, I didn’t want to burn him and possibly torch the building in the process.

I stared up at him, but he didn’t touch me.

Juri, please don’t look at me that way. I’m not going to strike you. I’m simply trying to understand why anyone would. Yes, you look different, but that’s no reason to dislike you on sight or to treat you with violence.

I watched his eyes warily. No one, not even my parents, had liked me since I changed. My parents hadn’t tried to hurt me, well, not since my father tried to scrape my scales off, and he wasn’t really trying to hurt me. No, he thought he was helping, but plenty of people in this screwed up society of ours had tried to hurt me since I ran away from home, some of them succeeding quite well.

For a long moment, I hoped. Hoped he’d be different, hoped the look in his eyes wouldn’t start to change, hoped the look of disgust wouldn’t suddenly cross his face. Hoped I could at least get him to back up before it happened, thinking if he stayed far enough away from me, maybe… but then I saw the change in his eyes, and my hope died.

I stifled the sudden hot tears that wanted to come. Was it too much to ask that one person in this incredibly stupid world would not hate me merely because I existed? I hadn’t asked to be this way; it had happened without any rhyme or reason I could see. One day I woke up with scales. It was not my fault!

I almost despaired, something I hadn’t done since the night I ran away after I overheard my father tell my mother that the time had come for them to find a more permanent solution for me and heard her agree with him. It had taken a while for their dislike to go to full blown hate, I guess because they were my parents, but in the end, it had.

Then, I got myself under control. Tears wouldn’t help anything. It hadn’t then, and it wouldn’t now. If anything, it might make him madder quicker.

I clenched my fists in my lap and sat as still as possible, waiting to see what direction his budding dislike of me would take. I already knew it was a lost cause to think he would allow me to leave in two months.

He abruptly turned and went back around his desk and sat down. He clasped his hands together on the desk and sat frowning down at me. He started to speak but paused. The man was in conflict with himself. I could see that.

It surprised me. Most people didn’t stop to think about it once the dislike or hate set in. They got away from me as fast as they could as the medical doctor had, or as Dr. Hinson had after he couldn’t take seeing me every week anymore; or they lashed out at me in some way, like Mrs. Poole who always looked for reasons to hit me.

Or, they tried to capture me for their own purposes, as had the three people who quickly made me their captive after saying they would help me if I allowed them to study me, but after poking and probing and running me through their machines which I imagined saw inside me, began torturing me. For a month, they did this, by pulling my scales out one by one, seeming to be fascinated when they grew back.

They also wrapped rubber bands tightly around my tentacles to see what would happen, and when they dropped off and then grew back, they took to, first, chopping them off, which didn’t stop their growing back, then cutting them off in thin slices to see if they’d still grow back - which they had.

Those were the least painful of the things they did.

The administrator cleared his throat. "Juri, you were right. I don’t like you now," he said, sounding puzzled.

And this is strange as I have no idea why. I didn’t dislike you a minute ago, I think, so I have to conclude that there is some truth in what you’ve said.

Well, that was different. They usually just got me out of their presence as quickly as possible, or tried to attack me, or tried to catch me… well, I was already caught, so I guess he didn’t have to do that one. But, he