Step.
She could hear him just fine. “Get in here. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Then she was there, facing the green column and now, she could see the eyes in his head. They were like peeled grapes with dark pupils. The pain in her middle was intense, but it was her arm that frightened her. It felt like her right forearm was turning into wood, stiffening inside her sleeve. It was intensely painful.
With that fear and pain came understanding at how to relieve that pain. She smiled and the man must have seen something. Perhaps he knew about Baby and recognized one of her tribe. The door bounced off her hard right arm when he tried to slam it closed. She caught the door on the backswing with a speed she couldn’t truly comprehend. It was too fast for thought.
Even as the man turned to run, Mel’s senses sped up. He was moving so slowly. A film slowed down for dramatic effect with only her in the audience to see it. The wind of her closing the door behind her blew her hair out to the side like a hurricane. Two steps were all he’d taken when she leapt for him.
Landing on his back like she was eager for a piggy-back ride, her stiff forearm curled around his neck and her legs wrapped around him. She was on him. Contact took away the pain, replacing it with an astonishing and sudden ecstasy.
The man bounced around the apartment like a pinball, slamming her into walls and sending furnishings tumbling. He made barely a sound. From his throat there was only a vague murmur amidst the bangs of overturning furniture and breaking glass. Mel tossed back her head and laughed as she smashed into another wall, feeling the drywall give and timbers crack.
The joy! The feeling of it!
Green fire engulfed them, and with each inhalation, each laughing breath, it flowed into her lungs and turned bright white. She could see it in her arm around his neck. It glowed. She’d become a glowing white ghost with an arm made of stone.
The man finally slowed, his neck loosening under her, his final slam against the wall weak. He stood there, more leaning against her than fighting her now. His hands and fingers weakly scratched at the sleeve of her coat. She slid down the wall as he fell, still wrapped around him like a blanket. The song was beautiful in her ears. Her own personal journal of ardency, her heart captured by the fire.
The green flames began to shrink, retreating to his core and allowing her to see him. His face was turned toward her, his eyes wide. He was just a man. She almost let go, but remembered Fat Leonard and focused on the song.
The delicious and indescribable feeling suffused her. This was better than sex. This was better than the best sex ever had by anyone in the history of sex. It was different, but better. Maybe great sex on a roller coaster in a world where the air was made of bubbles, and light touched skin like it was made of feathers.
The flames seemed to focus now, traveling up and out of the man as if on a mission to be swallowed into her body. He was dead. Mel could tell that already, but he was still here. He was shrinking somehow, desiccating. Hugging the man to her tightly, she opened her mouth wide…too wide for a human. It felt good. Stretchy and good and right.
The last of the fire danced up to her and then she was hugging nothing. Her eyes rolled up and she let the tiny flecks of black and gray ash filling the air fall as they may.
The song ended. The apartment was silent save for her panting breaths.
Blue Diamonds Sparkling
It took a minute, maybe two minutes, for the sensations to fade enough that Mel could focus again. She blinked hard, swallowed, then shook her head to clear the fog.
“Talk about afterglow,” she murmured, then giggled in a most un-Mel-like way.
Her jaw ached vaguely and her arm tingled. She wanted to know if it had turned into stone or wood and if so, what that looked like. Yanking off her thick leather gloves, she tossed those to the floor. The sleeve of her only black shirt resisted sliding, so she shrugged out of the coat and tore the button on her cuff free when she yanked up the sleeve.
Her arm didn’t look that much different, but it certainly felt strange. Pressing a finger into the flesh created almost no impression. The veins on the underside pulsed toward the surface as there was little give in the surrounding flesh. Flexing the fingers of her right hand created a ridge of hardened muscle that was vaguely uncomfortable. Out of curiosity, she pressed the flesh above her elbow, but it was normal.
She wondered if this was permanent and how she would explain it. Also, the glowing white halo still surrounded her, and if that was visible, it would be even more awkward to explain. Impossibly awkward.
A sudden sense of give made her arm feel heavy and weak. Another press of her fingertips and the softness of normal flesh returned. No more arm made of stone. Hopefully, the white light would fade too. Sighing in relief, Mel looked around.
“Hmm, black was probably the wrong color,” she mused. Her entire body was sprinkled in gray ash. It smeared under her palm when she attempted to brush it away, creating a streak of paler color against her black pants. It really was greasy feeling. Baby had been right about that.
Well, Baby had been right about a lot of things.
Mel stood, took out her earbuds, then looked at the wall behind her. The drywall was broken and caved in, a visible timber in the middle bent and splintered. That should have hurt. It should have broken bones. She rolled her shoulders and arched her back. Nothing. No
