Try as we might, no one could persuade Letty to eat even a single piece of her bed. She insisted on keeping it as it was, so that she might continue to recline upon it. However, she was open to eating half of one of the cabinets, and for the sake of keeping the peace, I begrudgingly consented to her doing so, just as long as she didn’t eat the cabinet next to Werumed-san. Thankfully, the hag didn’t protest that, and that was for the best, because, out of all the transformees in Room 268—including myself—Letty had shown more control of her powers than any transformee I’d encountered, with the possible exception of Werumed-san. That being the case, I made it my mission to avoid provoking her unless there was absolutely no other alternative.
In fact, such was Letty’s control over her powers that she no longer needed to walk. She simply floated from one destination to another, with her skeletal legs dangling beneath her like wind-chimes. I doubted she could have walked on her own two legs if she even tried. Heck, at one point, one of her legs simply snapped off, but she caught it with a patch of plexus before the leg ever hit the ground. She then floated the leg up to her mouth and ate it like a churro, one bite at a time.
When I asked her how she’d become so skilled, she sneered at me and said, “I practiced in my sleep.”
Like before, Letty smirked in self-satisfaction, knowing that I wanted to know what she knew, but refusing to tell me. I imagined the smirk would have been quickly wiped off her face if she knew that my wyrmsight let me see the details of her plexus construction that she thought she’d been denying me. I’d tried levitation, and had screwed up royally. Letty hadn’t, though, and I’d be a fool not to take advantage of that.
The answer turned out to be “hit yourself” levels of obvious: she’d shaped her levitation plexus into a spherical shell around her body, pushing inward in every direction. The bottom of the sphere was a little thicker, so as to counteract her body weight. Whenever she moved too far up or to the side, the rest of the plexus would push her back to the center of the sphere. To move around, all she needed to do was move the sphere, which would then carry her along with it.
It just goes to show: even horrible people can be smart.
As expected, consuming the cabinet advanced Letty’s transformation, though not as much as the other transformees. I suspected that was due to her extensive use of her powers, both now and over the past few days.
Letty greedily bit off her shriveling fingers as her digits swelled and sprouted claws, leaving her with inhuman hands and arms worthy of a professional bodybuilder. Her arms thickened at the same time, changing along with her hands. All of her new tissue was covered in purple wyrm-scale, though not nearly as dark as my own.
To my amazement, I managed to placate her by turning on the television on a nearby empty bed’s console and tuning the channel to VOL News. Letty hovered over to her new bed and dropped onto its covers with a cackle and a plop. John Henrichy’s neo-fascist screeds held her in their spell, and though I was worried about the long term effects they’d have on her mind, at the moment, that was a risk I was willing to take.
I had other patients to worry about.
I resumed attending the transformees, aiding them as best as I could—now with Kurt at my side—Bethany, too. The young woman’s meal had gone toward forming her tail, which had grown long enough to trail on the floor behind her. Her hide was brown, though a lighter hue than her skin. The sight of her new appendage made her laugh bitterly.
“It’s not white and delightsome,” she said, quoting scripture, “but I’ll take it. Maybe I’ll get better treatment as a wyrm demon than as a human being.”
Every once in a while, Letty would peer up from her console screen and watch us. She chuckled at her fellow patients, enjoying their existential horror. She sneered at Kurt, Bethany, and me, at our efforts to combat those horrors and try and bring the transformees a sense of comfort.
One by one, I roused the last three newcomers from their noxtifellic slumber. Having Kurt at my side made a world of a difference. The process played out just like it had with him. As they stirred, hunger gripped them so deeply that—following a suggestion from Bethany—we’d taken to slipping blankets into their mouths before I injected them with the quixalin. That little trick made it much easier to convince them to eat, though the biggest difference, by far, was Kurt. Mr. Clawless used his powers to restrain the transformees as they awoke. Not only did that keep anyone from getting hurt, it also made my pleas that they keep their voices down that much more convincing, especially with Nathan and Bethany on hand to back me up.
For his troubles, Kurt got a little peckish, but he dealt with that by eating a pillow from one of the cabinets. I put in a request for more pillows, blankets and bedding. At the rate we were going, we’d soon run out.
Everything went about as well as could be hoped for, until a petty squabble rocked my ears.
I turned to Kurt. “Could you handle Nathan for me?”
Kurt bobbed his head in the affirmative and skittered over to Mr. Smirny’s bedside while I went to deal with our latest trouble.
A bed screeched across the varnished wood floor, pushed by psychokinetic plumes like a doodle of a gust of wind.
“Leave me alone!” Maryon snapped. “I don’t want to hear about the Angel!” But then she paused. She shot a wary stare at Werumed-san. Fortunately, the mascot was still bundled up in his corner of the room, muttering manic gibberish. She turned back to Lopé. “Beast’s teeth! You don’t know when to give up, do you? You’re just like my father.”
Maryon had managed to get herself up off the floor. Kreston’s mother had gained full control of her monster arm. She’d stretched her big arm out as far as she could, so as to minimize the angle it made where it touched the floor. Even then, her big arm still forced her up onto her tip-toes. Maryon kept herself from falling over by gripping the foot of her bed with her still-human arm.
She glared at Lopé.
“You’re a cruel child, you know that? You’re pushing your cult on me while I’m stuck here, barely able to move. I already believe in God! God wants us to be good people, to be fair and kind to one other. All the big religions teach that!”
“But there can only be one Truth,” Lopé said, “and that Truth is the Angel. It doesn’t matter if you’re good to one another or not. You need the Angel. We all deserve Hell. We are evil and debauched. Only the Angel can save us from an eternity in Hell. We don’t deserve to be saved, but He saves us anyway. That’s how much He loves us. That’s how much better He is than we are.”
Maryon opened her mouth, ready to scream. Fortunately for her and the rest of us, Lopé turned his attention to me as soon as he saw me walking toward them.
He brightened up as he saw me. Little tears glistened in his eyes. “Oh, Dr. Howle!” He shook his head in frustration. “Why are all so closed minded? I’m just trying to—”
“—I know damn well what you’re trying to do!” Maryon barked. “My father did it to me. My husband did it to me. It’s ‘cause of people like you that everything’s gone to shit. It’s ‘cause of people like you that my son is dead! Yes, the Godhead exists and set the world in motion. It watches over us. It wants us to be good.” She wept. “You’re still young. You still have your youth and what’s left of your innocence. Why dash that to pieces on scripture’s cruel dreams? God doesn’t meddle in human affairs.” She glared at the boy. “The Moonlight Queen could have stopped my son from dying, but she didn’t—and that’s the only evidence I’ll ever need. I don’t care if you call me selfish or closed-minded. Nobody gets to say what’s Right or True. You haven’t lived it, and neither has the Angel. You don’t know. You don’t!”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Maryon,”I said, trying to calm the situation, “It’s all right now. I’ll take it from here.”
“No, Dr. Howle” Maryon wept, “it’s not okay.” She stared at her monstrous hand. “I don’t know what’s Right or True, and now… nothing makes any sense. Maybe it never made sense in the first place.” Huffing, she shook her head, face contorting in pain as softly cried. “I’m a good person. Kreston was a good person. Why did he die? Why is this happening to me?”
I saw Lopé starting to open his mouth, and, knowing exactly the sort of thing he was about to say, I glowered at him, grabbed him by the shoulder and gently pulled him over to an adjacent bed.
“C’mon Paul,” I said, using his preferred name, “use your noggin! Is this really the time to be trying to spread your particular take on the Light?” I pointed at Maryon, who had fallen into a quivering silence. “Look at her. Look at the pain you’ve caused her. Doesn’t that bother you? Show some compassion, for crying out loud!”
Even though I had the Green Death and transformees and Andalon to deal with—not to mention all of my usual neuroses—I guess fate had decided it wasn’t enough for me. Now I had a Neangelical to deal with—and a ‘Demptist at that!
“God loves me,” Lopé explained, as if it sufficed for an answer to my question. “That love fills me. The greatest compassion I can show another person is to share the truth of that love with them. It would be greedy and cruel of me to hoard the Angel’s Love all for myself. A good person doesn’t sit back and let their fellow human beings consign themselves to Hell.”
Lopé glanced at Maryon. “I’m sorry your son has died; I hope the Angel saved him.”
“He—he might be dead,” Maryon said, “but he’s not gone! Kreston is still here!”
That got the boy to raise his eyebrows.
Maryon turned to me, more desperate than ever before. “Was it true, Dr. Howle, what you told me, earlier? It was true, wasn’t it? My son is now a spirit? With the wyrms?”
Lopé turned to me, looking very much perplexed.
Uh-oh.
Some slime got stuck in the back of my throat.
“Spirits? Wh-what do you mean?” He asked. There was genuine curiosity in his eyes.
Maryon explained. “Dr. Howle told me that the creatures we’re becoming—wyrms… he told me that they house the souls of the dead.”
“I… uh…” I fidgeted with my bow-tie.
The other patients were all paying attention now.
“If that’s true,” Maryon asked, “can I see my son? Can I see Kreston? Can I? Can I just talk to him? Please, anything you can do—anything… it would—”
“—Yes, it’s true,” I said.
Everyone stopped talking. They were all listening, now.
Listening to me.
“From what I…” Huffing, I slapped the tops of my thighs. “From what we currently understand about this transformation, it seems that, yes, you will be able to communicate with the ‘souls’ of the dead.”
Bethany shook her head and stared, her arms slack at her sides. “Great, so now even the doctors have lost their minds!”
“How else do you want me to explain it?” I asked, turning to face Bethany. “We’re all in uncharted territory now. I don’t understand what’s happening either.” Technically, that was a lie. “Would you rather have me tell you nothing?”
That definitely made her think for a moment.
As did I.
“As far as I understand it, you might feel lightheadedness or a buzzing sensation when souls get uploaded into you. I believe it has something to do with physical proximity to the bodies of the deceased, but I’m not entirely sure.”
“I’ve felt that way lots of times,” Lopé said, “but I haven’t seen any ghosts yet.”
“It might vary from one person to the next,” I said, “but, trust me, it’s going to happen.” I looked over the rest of them. “You might already have noticed some of the mental changes that are underway. Your memories are turning photographic. But that’s only the beginning. Sometime soon, you’ll be able to create things with your mind. It’s like the powers that Kurt and Letty have been manifesting, except only you and the spirits within you can see and interact with the things that you create. You can use these to entertain the ghosts or protect yourself from them, but… make sure to keep your imaginations from running wild. You might find your nightmares and daydreams taking on a life of their own.”
“Can I see my son?” Maryon demanded.
For once, I could tell her the truth.
“I don’t know. Even if you could get to the transformees that have reported interacting with him, I don’t know how you might go about interacting with another transformee’s ghosts. But that’s already off the table. It’s like I said earlier; you’re not going to be leaving this room for the foreseeable future, at least until we better understand how to deal with the fact that… well… people are turning into wyrms.”
I looked Maryon in the eyes.
“I will say this, though,” I added. “If you want answers, there is one thing nobody’s tried yet.”
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
“The transformation progresses the more you eat. I don’t know what it will be like on the other side of this, but I guess the only way to find out is to willingly speed along the changes by eating as much as you can. I can’t guarantee that it will give you the answers you seek, but I can’t say it won’t, either. Ultimately, the decision is up to you.”
A rather loud discussion broke out among the patients after that.
“Why does it matter to you?” There was no smarminess or self-assurance in the boy’s question, nor his demeanor.
I grimaced. “Because I’m a doctor?” I snorted. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Doctors fix the body,” he said. “Bodies fade. They rot. They’ll be perfected and made anew in the world to come.” Lopé gestured to the other transformees in the room. “While you’re focusing on their bodies, Dr. Howle, I’m trying to save their souls. That’s a lot more important, and a heck of a lot more permanent.” He shook his head. “You know what?” he said. “I don’t think you’re doing this for my sake.” He nodded sternly. “I apologize for using this language, Sir, but I think you’re only asking about the Angel’s Love because you want to shit on my faith. You’re jealous of it. You don’t want me to be happy, so you tear me apart to bring me down to your level.” He snorted, disgusted with me. “Well, I have news for you, Dr. Howle: Love is Love, and I feel terrible that you refuse to see it. You think you know what’s right and what isn’t, but you don’t. You don’t know what Love really is, and,” he nodded bitterly, “if I’m being honest, I don’t think you want to know.”
My vision blurred as tears trickled down my face. My cheeks were hot and clammy in the confines of my PPE.
“I want to believe that God is Good,” I said. I bore my soul for all the world to see. “But, how can I, when the world is dark and filled with horrors?” I glanced up at the other patients.
At my fellow transformees.
“People are callous and stubborn,” Lopé said, with a maturity far beyond his years. “Deep down, you know the truth. Man is cruel. He will not listen. He will not bear his heart to you. Pain and torment is necessary. Only torture brings out the truth. Without torture, people would cling to their errors and their foolish pride, because we prefer to lie in our sins than to be righteous toward one another. Suffering is the lash, and the lash turns you toward God.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Dr. Howle,” he said, “without pain, love is meaningless. Without God, life is meaningless. I do not want to live in a world without God—a world without Love. I’ve already experienced that. It brings only cruelty.”
“You…” I grit my teeth, “you think I don’t know what pain is? You think I don’t know what love is? And what it’s like to lose it?” I sputtered in rare fury. “You—you—” For an instant, a torch flared within me. I was ready to roar at the boy.
If I was a tea kettle, I would have screamed.
Instead, I seethed. I let out a long, long breath, quivering with feeling. It took a while before I settled on my next words, and Lopé kept his eyes on me the entire time, as if watching the gears as they turned in my mind.
“Don’t you care that your words hurt people?” I asked. “The world has enough pain as it is. How could you assent to heaping more suffering upon it? How could anyone?”
Nodding solemnly, Lopé made the Bond-sign, and then pressed his hand onto his heart. “If what I have said was anything other than the Angel’s truth, let Him strike the mouth from my face. His will is my will, and what I do, I do for Love.” He smiled at me, saddened by me; saddened for me. “I do not want you to suffer, Dr. Genneth. You are kind, but… kindness is not enough. It can never be. You need God. Only the Angel can save you.” He looked to his fellow transformees. “Man is depraved. We violated creation with sin. We deserve to be tortured for all eternity for bringing sin and death into the Godhead’s perfect world. The Angel chose to rescue us—to sacrifice Himself for us—we, who do not deserve it. We who are worse than mud. We are broken and hideous, we destroy all that we touch, and yet, He gives of Himself to us. His Light embraces us. It gives us comfort, and the promise that we will be forgiven. What act of love could ever rival that?”
I turned away, distraught and overcome.