Creatures

Chapter Twenty

When Danny came out of the tent, it was my turn to be surprised. He was just his normal self. It wasn’t a dog all. There was no hint of the Rottweiler he could become. His teeth weren’t even long, curved fangs. He often grew just the fangs so he would look like a vampire.

As we crouched down, I wondered if Beth’s performance in human form had impressed him. I certainly knew that human form was better than dog form to get across that tire swing and that high wire act through the Tesla coil.

Urdo walked out to stand between us. She had her hands on her hips, and she turned her head to look at each of us. We looked intense, we wanted to win. She gave one quiet nod of approval.

The horn sounded and the race was on.

I scrambled up the balance beam as quickly as I could. I was surprised to feel how slick the surface was. I wondered how some of the contestants had ever made it up in the first place. The rubber soles of my sneakers made it relatively easy. Danny and I made it to the top and into the next room.

“Two points, red team.”

I gritted my teeth, it had been a photo finish, but I guess Danny had been ahead as far as Urdo was concerned. We jumped for the tire swing at about the same moment.

Instead of climbing into the central hole of the tire, I got up on top of it and stood up on it. After a few swings, I took the leap and landed on my knees on the far ledge. I was ahead of Danny this time. I scrambled into the tunnel.

“Two points, blue team.”

In the room with the holes I hesitated chewing my lip. I took a few tentative steps forward trying to remember where I had seen people step before, where it was safe. I took a few more steps, and then Danny burst out of the tunnel and ran in a blur of speed and leapt for the far side. My jaw dropped open, because Danny was a dog.

A great booing erupted for my team.

“Cheater!”

Urdo raised her hand for quiet. “The tunnel was dark. No one saw him change. No rules broken. Two points, red team.”

There were more boos from my side, but they were subsiding.

Deciding not to fall further behind, I took a risk and ran along some narrow ridges between the open holes. I made it without finding any new ones, mostly by luck. I came out of the next tunnel into the room with the dominoes. A great wave of new jeering had erupted.

“He did it again!” came a cry from somewhere, I think it was Sarah.

Indeed, Danny was human again. He just used his dog form to get across that one obstacle faster than I could.

I tried to put all of this out of my mind and focused on getting across those darned dominoes.

I barely made it. Behind me, dominoes crashed and fell. Somehow, skipping from one of the next, I managed to get across. Danny made it too, he was good, I had to give him that. He beat me, mostly because he had had a head start from the previous room.

Suddenly, I was aware of a funny sensation. I felt feverish. My mother had always warned me that I would get heatstroke one day, whatever that was. I wondered, as I felt a rush of heat going through my body, if this was the moment my mother had always predicted.

Tired now, breathing hard, sweating, I crawled into yet another cloth tunnel. It was dark inside, and it seemed even hotter. It seemed close, like the tunnel itself was shrinking around me. I peeled off my shirt, tearing it in the process. Then I heaved myself up and kept crawling.

Everyone gasped as I entered the next room and grabbed hold of the black cable running through the shimmering Tesla coil.

“He’s changed!” someone cried.

“I don’t believe it!”

I looked over at Danny to see if he had figured out a new way to bend the rules. But I saw nothing unexpected. He was in his normal human form. He had taken hold of the cable and wrapped himself around it and was hanging underneath it. He was shimmying through the coil.

I did the same, reaching out my paws and grabbing the cable. I shimmied my body out toward the coils. Somehow, it still didn’t register in my mind…

“What is he?”

“I don’t know, but he still has his pants on.”

I almost lost my grip. I looked at my paws. Yes, I had paws now.

They were furry on the back, but with palms and claws. I realized I had actually changed! I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t know right away exactly what I was, but clearly it was some kind of mammal. That in itself was a relief. Just having changed into anything was a relief. What a time for it to happen, too.

Whatever I was, it certainly made navigating that wire several times easier than it would’ve been with my normal hands and feet. My tail helped too. Yes, I had a tail. Looking back down my body and seeing it, I knew the truth. It was long, and it was pink, and it was snakelike. It tapered to a point at the end.

I was a mouse. Or maybe a rat. Maybe-I hoped not, even as I thought of it-I was a possum.

Danny had no chance of beating me at that point. Rodents are good at climbing along wires. Andy could have beaten me, but he had gotten his tail zapped. At that thought, I made an effort to control my tail and wrapped it around the cable behind me so the same thing wouldn’t happen to me. Then I got down to the business of the race again.

The crowd was making a lot of noise now, more than any of us had made up until that point. They were cheering, and jeering, whistling and just plain screaming.

I had almost made it across when I looked over at Danny to see how he was doing. In the same moment, he looked across at me, probably to see what all the hullabaloo was about. That was a mistake for him. Because when he saw me, and my new form, he slipped. One of his legs dipped down and his ankle touched the coils. There was a flash and a buzzing sound.

Danny made a strange whooping sound and fell.

The crowd was going wild, but I ignored them. Paw over paw, I made my way to the finish. I ignored the crackling electricity that made my new 2 inch thick fur stand on end all over my body. I ignored the cheers and jeers. I focused on crawling across that wire.

I made it. At the far end, I pushed open the final door. It was heavy. Sarah could not have made it first. I propped it open and crawled out.

“Two points, blue team. Entire course finished. Double-score, blue team.”

I stretched out, panting. The kids had all gone wild, either cheering or booing. I was very tired, and my only thought was that my new whiskers tickled my face abominably. I wriggled my face and rubbed at my nose-I guess I should call it a snout-with my paws. My whiskers felt like pencils coming out of my face. Those long, white shoots of coarse hair, as thick as straws, were going to take some getting used to.