prepared to obliterate her.
A red beast leaped from somewhere. It swept Diana off her feet and tossed her over its shoulder. The eye beast unleashed its blast from point-blank range, but Diana’s furry savior was a blur, sweeping her from the line of fire.
The red beast darted from one side to the other, dancing with unnatural speed and grace around the eye’s pursuing beam. Everything the ray struck, including several people, dissolved. Quickly her furry rescuer was trapped in a corner. The beam swept toward Diana and the beast.
Several Smorgazes tackled the eye creature. They buried it under a rapidly growing pile. Flashes of light would lance out from deep within the mound of monsters, and one or two of Smorgaz’s spawn would disintegrate, only to be replaced by three or four more.
All Diana could do was stare at the devastation the eye had unleashed. Everything was just gone. Erased like it’d never been there at all. As far as she could tell the creature’s blasts just kept going forever. The trench that had been dug into the floor went down into the darkness, and she was willing to bet the blast had come out the other side of the Earth and was even now traveling through space, cutting an endless destructive scar across the universe.
The red beast shook Diana alert to more pressing concerns. She looked into its huge maw. Its head was almost wolflike, but not really. It had long ears like a rabbit’s, and two low-set black eyes. Its fur was long and wild. It opened its mouth, and she wondered if it was going to bite her face off.
“Snap out of it, Diana.”
The voice, buried under a savage growl, was almost unrecognizable.
“Sharon?”
Diana was almost too fixated on Sharon’s slavering jaws to notice her nod.
“You’re one of them?” asked Diana.
“No,” replied Sharon. “I’m not like them. I’m like you.”
A chill ran through Diana. Because whatever Sharon was, she wasn’t quite human anymore. And Diana was just like her. Only the realization that this was exactly the wrong time for this insight kept Diana from going mad.
The monsters spun around, knocking over tables. The pile of Smorgazes atop the laser eye creature filled half the pool hall, and it continued to expand. This would just keep going on and on if she didn’t stop it.
She dug deeper. She had some magic left. There was always more, she realized. She could never run out for long.
She stepped forward and unleashed a thunderclap to get everyone’s attention. The Smorgazes and the eye monster stopped fighting.
“Knock it off, you idiots.”
The Smorgaz spawn whined. The eye hovered toward her. She sensed its confusion. It threatened to overwhelm her, but only for a moment. She stayed calm, collected. The battle of wills was short because the eye wanted her to help it.
The world shifted. Everything went back to the quiet seconds before the pool hall had erupted into chaos. Because monsters didn’t exist. Or at least they shouldn’t exist in this reality, and this reality did a bang-up job of erasing their titanic battles. The damage was undone, the building repaired. But it was the people Diana found most confusing. It was one thing to erase their memories. It was another to reconstruct their flesh-and-blood bodies from the ground up. The eyeball monster had disintegrated at least a dozen people. Yet those same people were restored to life.
She wondered if they were the same people or if the universe had simply built flawless duplicates that would carry on their lives exactly like the originals with no one the wiser. Not even the clones themselves. Invisible imposters manufactured by a reality fighting a never-ending battle against a relentless barrage of weirdness.
Was she one of them herself? She had no way of knowing if she’d been killed in some previous incarnation. Maybe she was Diana mark two. Or three. Or fifteen. Maybe a strange dream she no longer remembered hadn’t been a dream at all, but the forgotten last moments of a former Diana.
Vom the Hungering waved a hand in front of her face. “Hey, everything okay in there?” He tried snapping his fingers, but the fur made that difficult.
“Maybe you should try slapping her,” suggested the eyeball.
Diana glared at him. “That’s not necessary.”
“Are you hurt?” asked Sharon, now in human form.
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
She moved a few steps away from Sharon. Diana couldn’t transform into a monster like Sharon could. But she wasn’t so sure she was human anymore either.
“Give her some space, guys,” said Sharon.
“No, I’m fine.” Diana cleared the haze out of her head. “Just adjusting.”
It seemed that was how she spent the bulk of her time now. Adjusting. Dealing with new absurd situations, new strange perceptions. Every time she grew used to one change, another was waiting just around the corner.
She set aside her cue. “I think I need to go home.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Sharon. “Want me to call you a cab?”
“No, I have a car.”
The eyeball hovered forward. “I call shotgun.”
“I always get shotgun,” said Vom. “Right, Diana?”
Another adjustment. She’d just gained a new cosmic horror. The eyeball, named Zap, sat in the backseat with Smorgaz.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” asked Sharon.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Diana tried to shake the image of beastly Sharon from her mind. Vom, Smorgaz, and Zap were relatively easy to accept. They were monsters, plain and simple. Maybe not in personality, but certainly in appearance and origin. But Sharon was a person. A person who could become something monstrous. That seemed more unnatural somehow.
It also blurred the lines. Diana hadn’t been aware of it, but subconsciously she’d been making it by convincing herself that, deep down, she was a human being and that all the magical powers, monstrous roommates, and otherworldly perceptions couldn’t change that.
Now she wasn’t so certain.
“It was nice meeting you,” said Diana, though it had actually been quite unpleasant. Although that wasn’t Sharon’s fault. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome.”
Sharon pulled a card from her pocket and offered it to Diana.
“I want you to have this. I know you’re going through some crazy stuff. I’ve been there. And your friends”— Sharon pointed at the occupants crammed in Diana’s car—“I’m sure they mean well, but it’ll be easier if you have access to someone who sees it from a human perspective.”
Sharon made sense, but Diana wasn’t sure if Sharon qualified as human. But Diana wasn’t sure she was the right person to make that qualification.
Diana took the card. Mostly to be polite.
“Call anytime,” said Sharon.
“Will do,” said Diana reflexively as she climbed into the car.
“Can you turn up the air?” asked Zap. “It’s a little stuffy back here.”
She repressed a frown and gave the creature a bit of advice that had become her lifeline.
“Deal with it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
