Chapter 3: “Will power.” I stared at the girl as if she had three heads and antlers. And had just grown a fourth head. “B-b-but I thought I could only tu-” I was interrupted by the girl. “You can change with help the first few times, or you can change with your own will, after you get the hang of it.” I still only had half an idea what she was saying. I had wanted to turn back to human. So I did. Then I understood. “You mean if I - whoa, this is cool!” I exclaimed. I had stopped myself in mid-sentence. Because, you see, I was already shrinking. I wasn’t POOF!ing, I guess that’s only vampire power. I was morphing. I became the size of a chicken. Very quickly. My skin turned scaly, and my fingernails extended into long, deadly claws. My eyes shrunk a tiny bit, and turned gold, not the usual blue-green that they normally were. Then, my butt exploded! A tail just popped right out. My clothing had disappeared, because I was no longer human. I was mostly dinosaur. “What in God’s name are you morphing?” The girl sounded nervous. Then I felt the sensation I had been waiting for. The feel of long, sharp points growing out of my teeth. Turning each one of them into the meat-tearing fangs I expected. My legs became skinny. I mean, so thin I looked anorexic. Even to myself. I was done. I was a dinosaur. Millions of years worth of evolution packed in that body of a steel, cool-eyed killer. I was perfection. I smiled. My long teeth glinted in the sunlight. I may have been small, but I was one of the deadliest things in my time. 65 million years ago. Of course, there were more dangerous things now. But I had an arrogance I had never felt as a human. I felt I could take anyone down. Anyone. Anything. I was a scaly, self-centered, killing brat from the past. I was lucky I wasn’t wearing shoes. They would have been ripped to shreds by the claws on my feet. The girl stared at me. Now I started considering that I had three heads and antlers. Well, one head and claws, actually. I knew it wasn’t the best way to get introduced, but I said, “What is your name?” “Laura.” “Okay, Laura.” I said uncertainly, “I am Josh. And I’m assuming you know-” “Rob?” she cut in. “Of course I do.” I was getting the impression that if no one was around she’d have a one-sided conversation with herself. She loved to talk. Then I noticed a spider. A small spider, sitting on her shoe. It crawled up her blue jeans. Up onto the side of her shirt. Towards the center. Then it crawled up. She must have noticed me staring, and I could see she was about ready to slap me. She didn’t see it yet. Then it crawled over to the side, onto her shoulder. “Aaaaaaaahg!!!!” she cried. Then I almost fell. It wasn’t because of the awful screech she made, but in a second she was gone. And King Kong was in her place! She roared. I quickly changed to human, not wanting to be stomped. I thought of that old song they taught kindergartners: My father is Godzilla, My mother is King Kong- I laughed silently. Then a universe came down! The sky was falling! The sky was falling! But it was a big, hairy sky. It landed inches away from me. And right on the doomed spider. It was just Laura’s foot. Boy, I thought, where does she buy her shoes? “Okay,” I said to Laura. “Who are you?” “I already told you. My name is Laura.” Great. First Rob and now her! I was getting really sick of all this. “Not who are you!” I said for the tenth time. “Who you are!” She looked confused. “What do you do?” I asked a little more patiently. “Do?” she replied. “I’m a kid!” I guess this was going to take longer than I thought. I sighed. “No, I mean w-” “I know what you mean,” she laughed. “I’m just teasing. I really don’t know who I am. But I know what I can do.” she looked up at me. “What do you mean?” I asked her. Then I looked at my watch. Crap! It was 3:00 in the afternoon! I didn’t have to be in school, it was Saturday. I was supposed to at home doing my re- Before I could finish my thoughts, I disappeared in a cloud of smoke. POOF! Again. I looked around. This place looked familiar... It was my bedroom. But something was different. Nothing I could see, though. It just felt different. Somehow. Then I looked over on the far left wall. There was a sort of bright outline. It opened. Silently, no noise. It opened, as if Casper was gliding along, gently tugging at it. I don’t know why, but I was drawn to it. A small voice in the back of my head just kept saying: Go towards the light. Gooo towards the light. I went up to it. And I walked through. I was horrified at what happened next. My throat started shutting itself down. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes started to water. I looked up through blurry eyes. And there was Laura. Eating a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich. You may be thinking Big deal! Right? Well, it was a big deal. I am allergic to mayonnaise. I don’t mean ACHOO! allergic. I mean highly allergic. I could die if I’m exposed to it. And that’s exactly what was happening now.
