Left of Center

My frequency has somehow shifted, the vibrations my body emit no longer resonate with the harmony of the universe; I have become a discordant anomaly playing against the orchestra.

This metamorphosis started on a beautiful, fun-filled day at the beach with Katrina, my girlfriend.

We sat on a large towel and quietly chatted about the stupid little inanities of our lives; she was smiling that gorgeous smile she subconsciously reserved solely for these magical private times.

Neither of us noticed the looming shadow of the stranger creeping up behind us, until he circled us, and pulled his gun.

Both of us threw our arms up, but it didn't change anything.

The mystery man just grinned and fired.

My perception of time slowed to a crawl as his first shot struck my beloved right between her deep Greek eyes, I didn't even see his second.

Everything faded into obscurity, and I felt like I was rolling across a strange, cosmic conveyor belt.

Before I got anywhere my eyelids burst open, and I drew in a much-needed breath.

I was lying naked in an endless field of dirt.

Not knowing what else to do, I yelled out, "Hello! Anyone?"

Then I remembered, "Katrina!"

I jumped to my feet and ran blindly for hours to try finding her.

While I suspected she may have died, I hadn't given up hope that I could save her.

Memories of her long black hair flowing freely in the afternoon breeze kept my bleeding feet moving forward, long past the point my legs told me to quit.

After what seemed like days, I slumped over and collapsed.

The dust which flew up didn't come back down as it should have, instead, it began swirling around me as if the earth itself was wrapping me in despair.

Quicker, and quicker it spun, picking up more dust with each pivot.

By the time I'd considered the danger of lying here, the small vortex had turned into a monstrous brown tornado that enveloped me completely, although it emanated no wind.

I felt nothing.

For minutes nothing happened, then it stopped, and a skinny dark-skinned man in an expensive-looking suit and a bowler hat stepped towards me.

"You must be the scion. Follow me."

His words slipped into my head as though I'd thought them myself.

While I couldn't comprehend it then, his ethereal power wafted from him in waves, and so I stood as fast as I could.

"Where are we going?"

He pointed to a vague shapeless mass near the horizon and started walking.

I trailed behind him like a lost puppy.

Flashes of my love's face entered my mind sporadically throughout our silent trek.

Each memory of her brought a new level of anguished pain into my being, and I nearly toppled over a few times, as a ball of pure agony slowly welled up in my stomach.

The sun never moved from straight above us throughout our entire journey which stretched beyond time's grasp.

At the end of our mysterious expedition, there stood a woman as naked as I, save for a featureless wooden mask.

I opened my mouth to question who she was, but before I could speak, she leaped directly at me and disappeared; a thick smoke surrounded me, and my gut ached worse than it ever had before.

Within moments, my affliction overwhelmed me and I blacked out.

I screamed my way back to consciousness, and saw that I was on that dreadful beach again; the tide had crept in as night fell, and I was still alone, and nude.

As I looked down, I saw that a strange tangle of alien-looking, purplish, tendril-like growths extended from where my genitals used to hang.

For some reason, I accepted this new mutation, and walked beneath the pier, where a large man was attempting to molest a young woman; I jumped on top of the violent fellow, my tendrils pierced his spine as I pulled him off of the frightened teen.

Once inside of him, they elongated, and painfully separated his vertebrae, one by one; causing this fiend to squeal out like a pig being shot with a taser.

I stepped back, and watched the writhing man as each tendril opened up, and grafted itself to his supple innards; after watching him suffer for a while, I instinctively thrust my hips forward and forced my body deeper into him until I felt his mental capacities drain into my own.

When the attached tips of my dark tendrils broke off inside of him, burrowed through his spinal marrow, and rebuilt his back to overtake his mind, and body, my conscious self split between our two bodies; I was looking out of two sets of eyes, hearing from two sets of ears, thinking with two minds, and even controlling two bodies at once.

At first, living multiple lives was a terrifying experience, but as soon as I saw that scared young woman still lying on the sand, terrified by what she'd just seen, I felt oddly comfortable in both of my skins.

She got up, and ran away horrified; that girl was the first, and the only person to get away from my clutches, but I felt sorry for her.

Nobody deserves to almost be sexually assaulted, then be infected by a mutant parasite, well not right afterward at least.

As I watched her running away, a strange twinge came from my new body's pubic area; what I was first worried was a burgeoning lust in my new nether regions turned into something more, as my second body's genitals fell off, and those purplish tendril things ripped through my flesh.

All of this happened months ago, now I am an army.

I, me, we are all over this town, and the rest of these suckers have no idea.

There was one person though that I decided not to ingratiate into my collective, that stranger who killed my Katrina, and my humanity.

I've found out his name is Gareth MacArthur, and he lives in apartment six-oh-three at one-thirteen Pliny Avenue; I am all of his neighbors now, and his landlord.

At midnight, this evil man is going to have an accidental six-story fall onto a bed of concrete and asphalt, and nobody is going to see it.

Then, after he dies, he will be forgotten, and I will be everyone.

If you're reading this, you are still in the minority, but time is on my side; be you soon.