She dug deeper. She had some magic left. There was always more, she realized. She could never run out for long.
She stepped forward and unleashed a thunderclap to get everyone’s attention. The Smorgazes and the eye monster stopped fighting.
“Knock it off, you idiots.”
The Smorgaz spawn whined. The eye hovered toward her. She sensed its confusion. It threatened to overwhelm her, but only for a moment. She stayed calm, collected. The battle of wills was short because the eye wanted her to help it.
The world shifted. Everything went back to the quiet seconds before the pool hall had erupted into chaos. Because monsters didn’t exist. Or at least they shouldn’t exist in this reality, and this reality did a bang-up job of erasing their titanic battles. The damage was undone, the building repaired. But it was the people Diana found most confusing. It was one thing to erase their memories. It was another to reconstruct their flesh-and-blood bodies from the ground up. The eyeball monster had disintegrated at least a dozen people. Yet those same people were restored to life.
She wondered if they were the same people or if the universe had simply built flawless duplicates that would carry on their lives exactly like the originals with no one the wiser. Not even the clones themselves. Invisible imposters manufactured by a reality fighting a never-ending battle against a relentless barrage of weirdness.
Was she one of them herself? She had no way of knowing if she’d been killed in some previous incarnation. Maybe she was Diana mark two. Or three. Or fifteen. Maybe a strange dream she no longer remembered hadn’t been a dream at all, but the forgotten last moments of a former Diana.
Vom the Hungering waved a hand in front of her face. “Hey, everything okay in there?” He tried snapping his fingers, but the fur made that difficult.
“Maybe you should try slapping her,” suggested the eyeball.
Diana glared at him. “That’s not necessary.”
“Are you hurt?” asked Sharon, now in human form.
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
She moved a few steps away from Sharon. Diana couldn’t transform into a monster like Sharon could. But she wasn’t so sure she was human anymore either.
“Give her some space, guys,” said Sharon.
“No, I’m fine.” Diana cleared the haze out of her head. “Just adjusting.”
It seemed that was how she spent the bulk of her time now. Adjusting. Dealing with new absurd situations, new strange perceptions. Every time she grew used to one change, another was waiting just around the corner.
She set aside her cue. “I think I need to go home.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Sharon. “Want me to call you a cab?”
“No, I have a car.”
The eyeball hovered forward. “I call shotgun.”
“I always get shotgun,” said Vom. “Right, Diana?”
Another adjustment. She’d just gained a new cosmic horror. The eyeball, named Zap, sat in the backseat with Smorgaz.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” asked Sharon.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Diana tried to shake the image of beastly Sharon from her mind. Vom, Smorgaz, and Zap were relatively easy to accept. They were monsters, plain and simple. Maybe not in personality, but certainly in appearance and origin. But Sharon was a person. A person who could become something monstrous. That seemed more unnatural somehow.
It also blurred the lines. Diana hadn’t been aware of it, but subconsciously she’d been making it by convincing herself that, deep down, she was a human being and that all the magical powers, monstrous roommates, and otherworldly perceptions couldn’t change that.
Now she wasn’t so certain.
“It was nice meeting you,” said Diana, though it had actually been quite unpleasant. Although that wasn’t Sharon’s fault. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome.”
Sharon pulled a card from her pocket and offered it to Diana.
“I want you to have this. I know you’re going through some crazy stuff. I’ve been there. And your friends”—Sharon pointed at the occupants crammed in Diana’s car—“I’m sure they mean well, but it’ll be easier if you have access to someone who sees it from a human perspective.”
Sharon made sense, but Diana wasn’t sure if Sharon qualified as human. But Diana wasn’t sure she was the right person to make that qualification.
Diana took the card. Mostly to be polite.
“Call anytime,” said Sharon.
“Will do,” said Diana reflexively as she climbed into the car.
“Can you turn up the air?” asked Zap. “It’s a little stuffy back here.”
She repressed a frown and gave the creature a bit of advice that had become her lifeline.
“Deal with it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Back home (though she hesitated to call it that) she entered the building at the same time as the guy from Apartment Number Two. She was surprised to see his dog had allowed him outside. He carefully trod the steps while carrying two overflowing grocery bags.
“Hi,” she said. “Need some help?”
“If you’re offering.” He handed her one. It was full of canned goods and heavier than it looked.
“Want me to carry that for you?” asked Vom.
She decided letting a ravenous monster carry groceries was a bad idea and just soldiered on.
As they walked toward his apartment, she tried to think of something clever to say. Something witty. Something, at the very least, memorable.
“Getting kind of cold outside, huh?”
Chuck, his back to her, kept walking. “Beg your pardon?”
“Outside,ze="3">” she said. “Cold.”
“Didn’t notice,” he replied.
They climbed the short flight of stairs to the second floor. She screwed up her courage and tried again.
“A bit late for grocery shopping, isn’t it?”
“I don’t pick my schedule,” he replied. “Have to take my opportunities when I get them.”
At the top of the stairs, she noticed his monster hound was missing from its post at his apartment door.
“Where did it go?” She regretted asking it. She didn’t want to step into a sensitive area.
Chuck’s response was deadpan.
“Away. It does that sometimes.”
The door opened by itself as they approached. He went inside.
She paused on the threshold, waited a few moments for Chuck to reappear. He didn’t. She set the groceries down.
Vom inspected the contents of the bag. “Oh, is that salami?”
She glared with disapproval.
“All right, all right.” Vom and Smorgaz walked to her apartment just a few feet down the hall.
She glanced down the length of the hall. The dog was still not there.
Diana called into Chuck’s apartment. “Hello?”
He didn’t answer.
She grabbed the groceries but hesitated. Casually entering one apartment had gotten her into trouble recently. Perhaps she would be wise to think about it this time.
She scanned the room. Everything looked normal. The décor of the place was difficult to pin down. It was like a designer had cut it into zones, and each tiny zone had its own theme. The couch was from the sixties, bright orange and covered with fringe. The television was a wood-paneled monstrosity from the fifties. The coffee table was a thin, irregular piece of metal that must’ve been from the future because it floated without any means of support. The flooring was equal parts carpet and wood, broken into a checkerboard pattern.
It didn’t look dangerous. But her life was already weird now, and peril was something she was getting used to. She stepped into the apartment. A light, sticky sensation hit her face as she did so, as if she had walked into a spiderweb. Her first instinct was to brush it away, but there was nothing there.