Wings.
She was sprouting fledgling wings.
Shaking with fear, she dropped the hand held and heard it shatter on the hard tile at her feet.
She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was agape, but no air entered her lungs. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel the ache in her back, now more acutely than even moments before.
They were growing, changing.
Even as Meg stood with shards of broken glass dancing in the light around her feet, the wings possessed her. She felt herself quiver with fear and pain as she unintentionally stretched the growths.
Terrified, and determined to stop the mutation, she ran from the bathroom, not even stopping when a shard of glass dug into the arch of her foot. With blood trailing, Meg sprinted to the tool box she knew was kept in the garage. Feeling the foreign appendages growing by the minute, Meg frantically rifled through the box’s contents and found the rusted tool she was looking for.
Without stopping to think of the ramifications, she opened the large wire cutters and reached to feel for the base of one of the wings, now sporting several real feathers.
Blindly, Meg felt to position the rusted cutters in place and used both hands to close the handles together, screaming at the pain she was inflicting on herself.
Clip
Meg felt wetness slip down her back but didn’t care. What she did care about was attacking the other wing before it grew thicker than the wire cutters could accommodate.
Repeating the blind, crazed positioning of the tool, she squeezed the handles together a second time and heard her own anguished cries echo off the unfinished walls of the garage.
Clip
More warm, wetness oozed down her back from where the second wing used to be.
Standing in an ever-growing pool of red, Meg stared down at the clipped bone-like appendages where they landed on the dusty floor. She watched her red blood soak into their willowy white feathers.
Pain radiated from her back escalated. It became piercing, all-encompassing. Meg swayed on her feet from it, or maybe it was the blood loss.
Dropping the bloodied, rusted tool, she reached back to feel the site where she had severed her wings, and for the briefest of moments, felt relief that she had stopped the mutation from achieving fruition.
That’s when Meg felt the ache return and the wet, bloody stumps start to grow again under her fingers, sticky with blood.
She screamed in anguish, and collapsed out of control to the dirty floor.
***
A warm hand was rubbing Meg’s back where she was sure the wings were growing. The hand rubbed harder, and she whimpered in pain.
A groan escaped her locked jaw as she shook with fear.
“Meg? Meg, wake up,” a raspy voice urged.
Her eyes were clenched shut with the fear of seeing the orange rust on the wire cutter clash with the dark-red blood dripping off their blades.
“Meg, open your eyes. Wake up. Please wake up,” the voice pleaded.
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed quietly, still caught in the nightmare.
The gentle rubbing on her back continued, and Meg waited for the person to gasp in horror at the growing deformity where they touched her, but they didn’t.
It took her several moments before she pulled her hands away from her wet face and shook the echoes of the nightmare off.
Meg looked around the floor first and seeing no blood, reached up behind her and felt for the wings she was sure were still growing there.
Her hands only touched the flat expanse of her back. Nothing was sticking out of her. Hurriedly, Meg checked the other side, only to find the same unbelievable normality.
Meg breathed deeply and ventured to look up at the person who had spoken to her so tenderly through a raspy voice.
Cole.
His green eyes looked worried as they searched Meg. He was still lying on his gurney.
“Cole?”
“You were dreaming,” he said frowning.
“You…you’re awake.” The adrenaline from her terrifying nightmare was still pumping, causing Meg’s teeth to chatter.
“Are you okay?”
“Me?” Meg shook her head dismissively, trying desperately to grasp the here and now. “Never mind me. How are you feeling?”
Cole looked around then connected with her eyes again. “Where are we?”
“On a plane heading back to the states,” Meg offered not sure how much to unload on him during his first moments of consciousness.
“You were asleep on my chest,” he jumped subjects, offering a weak smile.
“Yeah, I guess I was,” she shrugged, running her fingers through her mussed curls. The dream left her feeling foggy. It seemed so real. Meg fought the urge to touch her back again to be sure she didn’t feel wings sprouting.
“Why are we going back to the states? What happened?” Cole frowned anew.