Metamorphose Teaser

        I.

        Met-uh-mawr-fohz – verb (used with object):  to change the form or nature of; transform.

        Ta dum.
        Ta dum.
        Ta dum.
        Pulses felt by palpating and pressing hands manifested an arrhythmia. Her breath breached consciousness and eyelids unsealed, irises constricting their pupils as they flitted from white wall to weighted, slate hinges.
        Ta dum.
        Ta dum.
        Dum ta.
        Her blood hastened in reverse systolic motions. She could discern the rhythm, flooding into ventricles from pulmonary arteries and escaping through adjacent atria.
        She sat up.
        Her fingers curled like paper to the flame, clenching the bed sheets. She spasmed; tense on the left, jerking on the right. Her vision came in fuzzy spurts of grey, analogous to an analog signal with interference. Pills, where were her pills?
        Dum dum ta.
        Ta dum.
        Ta dum.
        Arthritically and spastically trembling, the covers were cast off by her hands as she scrambled to yesterday's top and shorts lying on the stainless steel floor by the bed. She eyed the dented denim of the left pocket and knew the pills were there, of course, six in total; three days' worth. Retrieving them she twiddled and thumbed them with the tenacity of a toddler who had pried open the pill bottle.
        They were more than pills, she contemplated, they were dessert and dinner, and the only meal available on this ship. The drugs rested in her palm; her heart bounded backwards. Three days in meals…
        Ta dum.
        Ta dum.
        Ta dum.
        Splitting her lips, her voice emerged, ushering in an evident disquiet at her disorientation.
        "Uh… muh, mu…" Mustering, she tested to see if the syllables were pilferable from her tip-heavy tongue. Stuffing the dose back into the denim pocket, she bowed to drag the shorts on, and yawned to pull the worn yarn shirt over her.
        Like a branding burn, a scathing on her sinistral shoulder prodded her to soothe the singe with a dexterous hand, meeting the throb and texture of a gravelly scab. Slowly, her fingers fell down the length of her arm; while her peering straight ahead aggrandized the blemishes and blisters her fingertips tumbled over.
        Scrawled on her forearm to forewarn her of her hindrance of taking the tablets, she read in her indelible, dashed ink: why resist—
        Leering at the tattooed cacography a thought occurred that eased her into defiance— why desist when the fear is irrational? Gazing around the undisturbed room, disturbed, she felt her heartbeat resonate with her stuttering breath, and it gave her confidence to begin her day aboard Sojourner-81.