GITJ Post 342: A Saturday at Melissa's, Epilogue (Sun 1:30am)

The crash had come an hour or so after midnight. Randi, Lakshmi and Josie were picking up in the kitchen, making sure the place wouldn’t be a wreck when Missy came down the next morning. Wine glasses, plates, all the detritus from the evening was nearly all cleaned and returned to its rightful spot when a sudden shattering of glass and Amelia’s exclamation “holy shit!!!!” ripped them from their duties. The three girls froze, looked at one another. It had sounded like a broken window, or one of the glass doors in the adjoining great room had exploded.

“Uh, guys…” came Amelia’s voice again, “…Marisela’s here...”

….

Thirty minutes later....

“Good, good…you got all the blood off her,” Randi spoke, trying to control the anxious crack in her smoky voice as she slipped into the elegant downstairs mudroom in which they’d locked Marisela. There was a spray-shower and utility sink, walls of travertine tile. Marisela was seated, kneeling in the corner with a strangely placid expression on her face. Despite her appearance when she arrived, she didn’t seem violent but they hadn’t wanted her dripping onto the carpets, tearing something with her claws, or knocking something over with…whatever those had been. So, with some calm, careful words and urging hands they’d slowly walked her into the mudroom and locked the door. They figured they’d leave her in there for a bit, decide what to do.  “Has she said anything yet?” Randi asked.

“No, not really,” Lakshmi answered. She and Josie had been tasked with going in, after about fifteen minutes, and cleaning her up. “She has not complained or said really anything.” Josie was at the sink, scrubbing something off the heel of the black stilettos Marisela had strode in wearing when she stepped through the broken glass of the sliding glass door she’d shattered earlier. She hoped it wasn't brains.

“She’s looking a little more normal, now, at least,” Josie said, the stress in her voice still belying the shock they’d all felt seeing their friend standing there in the great room, covered fangs-to-feet in the blood of what was likely several men. The blood was now gone, the talons had retracted, and the, uh…whatever those things were had disappeared as well. And though Marisela also looked a little more focused, she still wore the tranquil expression of someone who really didn’t know what was going on, and apparently hadn’t spoken a word since her arrival. At least she was clean.

“But, jesus. Look at her tits,” Randi remarked. They were enormous, distended on her chest to three times their normal size, somehow still contained in a revealing black bodysuit that seemed stretched close to bursting.

“Yeah I know,” Lakshmi replied, “she is still swollen.”

“And, um…her muscles?” Josie remarked. The friends were talking about Marisela, normally a whip-smart woman of acerbic wit, as if she wasn’t even in the room.

“She looks better than before, at least, more normal,” Randi commented. Marisela, for her part, looked unperturbed, gaze shifting with cool, curious interest from one girl to another. “I mean, before? Her hair? Her teeth and nails? Even, like…what was up with her face?”

“Yeah it was worse before, she is getting better,” Lakshmi agreed, “She was looking a lot, uh…”

“...a lot like Missy?” said Amelia, who had just appeared at the door behind Randi.

“Yeah,” the three others agreed in unison.

They all looked at Marisela. Even-tempered and poised, Marisela looked right back at them.

“Is she able to hear us?” Amelia asked.

“I think she is starting to,” replied Lakshmi.

Marisela had turned her attention away from the humans in the room, and was now serenely watching her own hand caress the stone tiles of the wall.

“Okay well we can’t let Missy know,” Josie said, “You know how she gets.”

“Yeah I know but, Jesus,” Randi answered, “She’s murdering people.” That quieted the room. They had all seen the reports, the morning news that inevitably always followed the nights where the blissful changes would overtake the girls. Men were being targeted, murdered in the most gruesome of ways by a mysterious serial killer. ‘Slain like pigs’ had been one description.

“And what were those things on her back?” Amelia asked.

“I…I dunno…” Lakshmi replied.

“Wings,” the blonde said, “They were fucking wings.”

The girls all looked in awe and concern once again, at their friend and co-worker Marisela. She was casually playing with some white flowers in a vase on a wall shelf.

“Hey, sweetie…” Randi spoke, keeping her voice as calm as she could manage, “there’s some sushi left over. Are you hungry?”

Marisela’s gaze slowly drifted from the flowers to the voice of her friend, and she cocked her head. She seemed nonplussed to find Randi standing there. “No thank you,” she said, smiling temperately, “I’ve already eaten.”

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Thanks again to ResistanceIsFutile for help in editing