nervousness. But yes, it was as if the seat was narrowing. Justin’s shoulders felt too large, and when he turned his head his chin actually scraped against a bulbous, massive swelling that rightly belonged on a whole different person, a much larger, much more muscular person.
“What the . . .?” Justin blurted. He was blowing up like an inflatable bed, muscles bulging at shoulders, thighs, arms, all of him growing. His seatbelt stretched and then snapped!
“What’s happening?” he cried, snatching at the broken seatbelt with fingers that were not right, not right at all.
He screamed.
The pilot fought the crosswind and the plane rocked from side to side as they skimmed above Brooklyn. The engines surged and faded, surged and faded. Justin caught a glimpse of a cemetery just below them.
“Justin!” Erin cried suddenly, staring at him, mouth open, shying away from him as far as her own seatbelt would allow. “You’re . . . you’re . . .”
“What? What?” he cried, and now it was his voice that was not right, not his voice at all! His voice had become this huge thing, deeper, more masculine, gravelly. He sounded like some weird cross between Vin Diesel and Darth Vader.
“Look at your face! Look at your face!” Erin practically screamed. But of course he couldn’t, he couldn’t look at his own face, but he could see that the rest of him was becoming something very different. It was almost impossible to believe that it was him.
Madness to look down at your own body, hands, feet and not recognize them!
“My God, it’s happening!” he said in that voice like truck wheels going over wet gravel. “It’s happening!”
“D-d-does it hurt, baby, does it hurt?” Erin squeaked. She looked ten years older with her face distorted by fear.
“Just so . . . Just . . . weird. I . . .” Justin said.
And still he grew, swelled, thickened, his legs masses of bunched muscle. His black jeans tore, rrrriiiiip, and exposed limbs that looked like armor, like naked bone, like . . . no, like shell, like the hard chitin that formed a lobster’s shell. Tiny pricks, wicked little rose thorns rose from the armor that covered his legs and now arms.
Snap! The armrest broke off.
Erin screamed, words all gone, in full panic now, and she yanked off her own seatbelt and fell on her rear end in the aisle, legs pistoning, trying to escape being crushed. The flight attendant seated in the rear-facing jump seat said, “Ma’am, return to your—” before she froze in mid-word, eyes bulging in horror, jaw trembling as she saw Justin.
They were seconds from touching down when the fingers of Justin’s still-human right hand melted together and he cried out in gibbering terror. His right hand no longer had fingers, no longer had a wrist. It was a spear, a sword, dirty blue and coral in color . . . and it was growing!
This is not what I wanted! I wanted to shoot light beams!
Even his terrified mind was ashamed of that juvenile complaint. It was working, he was morphing into something very different. He was becoming . . . art!
As the sword arm grew, his left hand thickened, and it split in half, split bloodlessly wide open between middle and ring finger, forming a hideous lobster-like pincer that swelled until it must have weighed fifty pounds all by itself. Justin whinnied in terror.
It ought to hurt, some small, still-aware part of his mind knew. It ought to be agony. But it was not painful, not really, just mind-bending, insane, impossible.
Impossible!
But all the while his right hand, the sword, kept growing, growing, the melted fingers flattening first into something like a boat’s paddle that thinned at the edges and glittered as it became, unmistakably, a blade. Now, with startling speed, Justin’s blade hand grew outward, longer and longer till the blade tip sliced straight through the side of the cabin, ripping the aluminum flesh of the plane just below the window as if it were no more substantial than a paper bag.
“Aaahh!” Justin’s bladder emptied into his ripped jeans, but that was the least of his concerns.
The window cracked and blew out. A hurricane of cold wind rushed in, grabbing inflight magazines and menus and whirling them around the cabin. And now came more screams, screams of disbelieving panic as everyone in the first-class compartment saw, and lurched up from their seats and backed away, toward the cockpit or down the aisle into coach, piling over each other while the jet shuddered and rocked violently. Everyone was in a panic, rushing to get away, staggering, slipping, shouting, everyone but the elderly couple seated just ahead of Justin and Erin who were either asleep or amazingly oblivious.
Justin tried to draw his sword hand back, but it was too long (Not my fault!), too long to fit inside the plane and, instead of retracting, that blue and coral blade sliced upward (Not my fault!), ripped effortlessly through the molded plastic and the aluminum outer skin of the plane, ripped up through the overhead luggage compartment, bisecting carry-on bags, and the plane lurched more wildly than ever, and an appalled Justin (Not my fault!) saw that the cut he’d made was widening. An inch. Two inches. Three! The plane was breaking apart, and in a few more seconds the rear seventy percent of the plane would break off and they would all die in a fiery crash.
And people will say it’s my fault, but it’s not—I didn’t ask for this!
The wheels touched tarmac with a rubber squeal, the plane bounded, slewed sideways, bounced again, screams and screams and screams all the while, and Justin screaming too, and Erin knocked into the now-empty seats across the aisle, staring at him with eyes so wide her pupils were just dots surrounded by white.
And then, miraculously, the plane was rolling on all three wheels, rolling down the tarmac, but the screaming did not stop because now they all knew that a monster was among them, a nightmare creature who rose from his seat, head scraping the ceiling. It turned heedlessly to look back at the passengers and swept his blade hand forward, slicing through the seat ahead and the elderly couple occupying those seats. (Not my fault!) The blade cut through their chests and the tops of their bodies, from mid-chest upward, toppled off, landing with a wet and heavy impact, like cattle in a slaughterhouse, nothing but slabs of meat. Blood and gore bubbled up from their torsos, and in pure panic now, seeing what he had done (Not my fault!), not knowing what else to do, Justin surged toward the exit door, but his blade swept on, slicing through the galley, through the bathroom, and through the back of the cockpit, and suddenly there were no controls, and quite likely (though Justin could not see for sure) no pilots either.
The plane was rolling too fast, the reverse thrusters had not been engaged, and with no one steering, the jet veered wildly off the runway, careening with unstoppable momentum toward the terminal building and fiery destruction.
It was then that Justin’s mind cleared enough to see what he must do.
He swept his blade upward, cutting through the ceiling, and continued on, cutting a jagged path around the circumference of the fuselage until, with a deafening screech of tortured metal, the front of the plane fell away. Justin saw the terrified eyes of the flight attendant still buckled into her jump seat as she was carried off with the cockpit section.
The cockpit section slewed right, tumbled madly, turned again and again, sparks everywhere, and was struck by the right wing which sheared off from the impact, spraying jet fuel over the runway. The right-side jet engine snapped off the broken wing and cartwheeled fantastically, bounding away like a living thing, still running on the last of its fuel.
The main body of the plane slumped hard to its right as the wheel on that side had been carried away with the wing. Erin tumbled into Justin and her wrist was stabbed by one of his thorns, but he caught her in the crook of his arm. The fuselage, now skidding on its side, bucked and vibrated with an end-of-the-world sound of ripping aluminum and carbon fiber, the lower edge chewing and sparking along the tarmac. The forward momentum that would have slammed them into the