The Transmutants

THE TRANSMUTANTS



I was just finishing up packing two weeks ago when it all started. I put a picture of me and my friends in my suitcase against the locket that my father had given me when I was young. He’s overseas and we haven’t heard from him in a long while. I sigh. I am just packing my journal when a note falls out of the side. I pick it up and read the crumpled, yellowing paper. It reads, in curly letters, BEWARE. DO NOT TRUST ANYONE. I don’t know what it means, but it sends a chill down my spine, like a feather tickling me from the inside. I head down the carpeted stairs.

RING! RING! I reach over and slam my hand on the top of my red alarm clock. Placing my feet into my fluffy slippers, I head down the stairs. “Mornin’ Cassidy,”Mom says in her happy, country voice. “We’re heading out today.” I want to be happy, but I can’t help thinking about that creepy note in my diary.

We finish loading our suitcases in our Subaru Outback and I climb into the front seat. “You ready?” she says.

“Ready.” I smile.

After 11 hours, we pass the sign saying, Welcome to Beautiful Kingwood.

We arrive at our new house at 10:45 P.M on the dot. I walk through the wooden door and I feel an eerie feeling. I collapse on the couch and I fall into a dreamless sleep. Well almost. The note kept appearing in my dreams, over and over. It's curvy letters. It's yellowing paper. It was haunting me. And I had a feeling it had something to do with this eerie town.

“Wake up sweetie! Can’t be late!”

I groan. It’s time to go to my new school. I slip my favorite shirt on, a black shirt with the Adidas logo in bold. I put my jeans on and slip my long, stringy hair into a high ponytail. I put my gray Converse on and head down the stairs for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. I head out the door, just in time for the yellow school bus.

I arrive at school, scared of what is to come. Mom had told me to head to the principal’s office first, to get acquainted. I head in through the double doors in the front of the school. I see a door on the right with a sign on it that reads: Mr. Foster. I turn the doorknob and head into his office. A plump man is sitting at the desk with a colorful tie on. He hands me a paper. On the top, it reads Schedule. I notice that the handwriting looks an awful lot like the note I found. Thinking that I was just being superstitious once again. I head to my first class, which is apparently science. I head to Room 109.

On the way, I seem to get lost in the floor tiles and trophy cases. There are so many doors. A voice snaps me out of my thoughts. “You look lost.” a voice says. I turn around and I see a tall girl with black hair. She’s wearing a gray t-shirt with STAR WARS in big letters on the top and ripped jeans.
I smile. “Yes, could you direct me to Room 109?”

“Of course. Right this way.” she says.

“Be careful, though. Professor’s pretty loony.” she smiles a crooked smile and heads down the halls to her own class.

I walk into the classroom to see an old man with big, frizzy hair and a lab coat with a patch saying MR. ZOOBLEFIZZ. I sit down on one of the benches. Sitting in front of me is a girl with black hair and a gray t-shirt…

“But I thought you….” She smiles and turns back around.

The professor is writing something on the board. He turns around and I see two words on the board: NUCLEAR TRANSMUTATION. “Who has heard of nuclear transmutation?”

“Nuclear transmutation can switch two chemicals around in a human’s body and make people turn into actual mutants.”

I notice pretty much everyone is sleeping now. The professor doesn’t seem to notice, though. His eyes turn bright green and he keeps rambling on and on about mutants. Mutants…. Mutants…. Mutants.

I head out to the school bus and climb on. The bus driver arrives at my red and white house. Climbing down the steps, I wave goodbye to the bus driver, whose eyes are also green and hasn’t said a word all day.

I walk up to the steps and open the door. I notice I am not greeted with the usual bark of my german shepherd. “Mom, have you seen Pepper?” I asked. No answer. I look around and I finally find Pepper, huddled in a corner with green eyes, growling. I reach out to touch her, and she barks and snaps at me. “Mom?” I yell. Again, no answer. I call her, but all I can hear is “mutant, mutant, mutant.” What is happening? I think. I have only one person to turn to now. My best friend from New York.

I open Skype on my computer and click on the icon: Izzy. “Oh, my gosh, Izzy! Something weird is happening! Everyone is acting really weird. Their eyes are turning green! I don’t know what’s happening!”

“Whoa. Calm down. I watched this on CNN a couple days ago. A nuclear power plant blew up in Japan a couple weeks ago. Maybe it has something to do with that?”

“Thank you so much!”

“Sure. Glad I could help.”

I shut the computer and pull my phone out of my pocket. I look up: Nuclear Power Plant. Sure enough, the first result that comes up is Breaking News! Nuclear Power Plant in Japan Blown UP! I click on it and I read the short article:

In 2015, a horrible disaster struck. A nuclear power plant in Japan blew up. 1,500 people died. However, the scientists are worried because the explosion happened right near a coffee production plant. If any of the nuclear chemicals got into the coffee, it could potentially cause people to mutate.

Suddenly, it all comes back to me. The note, my friend, the principal, my mom, the science teacher, my dog.

When I found the note, there was a splash of coffee on it. The principal, he was drinking coffee. The science teacher had a cup of coffee in his hand. Pepper, he had lapped up the last bit of my mom’s latte when she spilled it on the floor yesterday. And my mom, who was going to visit the new coffee shop in town.

The only option I have is to just go to sleep and hope that when I wake up, it’s all a nightmare.

I wake up and try to get ready normally for school, but it’s weird not having Mom here. I go about my normal routine and grab a Pop Tart for the bus ride.

I arrive at the school the same time I usually do. I walk through the double doors. I am experiencing a different feeling than I did yesterday. A different kind of fear. The fear of well… mutants.

A shiver goes down my back as I head in. The school is completely, utterly empty. No teachers, no students, no janitors. A voice speaks behind me. Bracing myself, I turn around.

“Hello again.” The emo girl from yesterday is standing in front of me, her black hair flowing over her shoulders. “I don’t think we got acquainted yesterday.” she smiles. “The name’s Zexja.” She touches my hand. Her touch is stone-cold.

“Cassidy.” I say. I shake her hand.

“Okay.” she says. “ We’ve got some serious work to do.”

She leads me over to the janitor closet. “Come in here really quick, though. I’ve got to tell the whole story first.”

“Now this story is gonna seem crazy, but don’t interrupt. Just let me finish.”

“Okay,” I say, fear still running down my back.

“I come from a planet. A planet called Bashorix. There is no air up there, but we have special gills.” She turns around and lifts up her black hair and I see two openings on the back of her neck. “Anyway, I was sent on a special mission. I had heard that a power plant had blown up in Japan, so I was sent to get some nuclear energy because our planet runs off of nuclear energy. My friend, Borgko was sent on this mission with me.”
“Where’s Borgko now?” I ask, confused. She reaches into her shirt pocket and pulls out a small figure. He is dressed all in black and has slicked back hair the color of charcoal. “The pressure of the gravity made him shrink,” she says.

“Anyways, we arrived at the nuclear power plant only to find that all the energy had been transferred through the coffee. I called my master, Marie Zexa, and she told me to go to the town in which the coffee had been delivered to. And that is how I happened upon the town of Kingwood.”

“Is there any cure for this nuclear energy?”

“Yes. The nuclear energy in the coffee is messing with the citizens’ melatonin levels. In order to reverse these effects, we have to regulate them again. In order to do that, we have to release magnesium into the air. That should cure everyone.”

“Well, that’s easy enough.”

“Not exactly. Where are we going to get that much magnesium?”

“Follow me. I have an idea.” She stopped me from going out of the janitor’s closet.

“First, we’ll need to be hidden.” she grabs my hand. Her eyes turn black and suddenly, I am invisible. I look down and I don’t see my feet or my dark blue jeans.

I lead her to the science room. Her eyes turn black again and the door unlocks. I head to the back of the room, where Mr.Zooblefizz keeps all the chemicals. I open the closet to find two huge bottles with the word MAGNESIUM written across them.

“Perfect.” she smiles.

“Now, in order to release the magnesium through Kingwood, we’ll have to filter it and blow it out through a window.”

“Okay.” I pull the chemical filter out of the closet and put the magnesium through it. It turns out to be a kind of dust.

Zexja’s eyes turn black again. Rubbing her temples, she says a jumble of words. I can’t exactly make out what she’s saying. She must be speaking alien, I think.

I hear a snap, and across the room, appears a machine of some sort. It has a long trumpet on the end, and the rest seem to be a jar.

“What is that?” I ask.

“Exactly what we’re going to use to blow magnesium all over this town.”

She grabs the magnesium from me and pours it into the jar. “All you’ll need to do is just blow.”

I walk over to an open window and blow through the trumpet. The dust turns to smoke and fills the entire town of Kingwood. I see the people on the streets with green eyes slowly turning back, their eyes turning the right color again, saliva no longer dripping from their mouths.

“Job well done.” Zexja smiles. “Let’s get you back home.”

We walk out of the double doors of Kingwood Middle School and Zexja leads me home.

“Well, I guess it’s time for me to go.” She smiles that same smile that has repeatedly left me in a trance. “Bye, Cassidy,” she says, her arms reaching out. She pulls me in for a long hug. “Goodbye, Zexja.”

Her eyes turn black once again, and she hovers above my head. She says three words, “Silventia Don Rellonda”, and she whizzes over my head in a cloud of smoke. And then she is gone.

“Mom, I’m home!”
I walk in the door to find my mom sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in her hand. “Hey, honey. Want some tea?” I am just about to take the mug from her when I realize something strange. Her eyes are a little yellower than usual…..