The Beasts Within Us

When the sun rose the next morning, Susan rubbed her eyes three more times than usual. The character of the light in her bedroom wasn’t the cool gray tone she’d grown used to over the last few weeks. But it also wasn’t golden and warm. It seemed, against all odds, to be pink.

Susan opened the window to a cloudless cotton candy pink sky. She saw her neighbors on the sidewalk, the light glowing on their faces. As she watched the light seemed to turn each one into a small hairy creature.

Susan gasped as she watched her neighbors she only ever known turn into hairy beasts, all on 4 legs crawling on the sidewalk. Slowly, one of her neighbors turned its hairy head toward Susan...

Suddenly, Susan saw her partner Julie dash toward her blowing on a whistle that sent the beasts scurrying away in pain. “It’s an ultrasonic whistle — we discovered at the lab that it wards them off, but we still don’t know why they shapeshift to begin with.”

I sighed in relief. "Have you found any ways to detect them when they are shape shifted? Any rules of what shapes they can shift into?"

“There are no rules,” it said icily, morphing into an uncanny vision of … myself! Without thinking, I tased the creature, which instantly wilted into a pile of lettuce-like tissue. I grabbed a broom and cleaned the remains, overcome by the thought: how many more me’s were there?