A pancreas.
The ribbed bones crept around its lungs and heart, forming a protective cage around them.
The pinkish under skin blistered in the intense heat from the pink sky. A sun, previously unseen, introduced itself from behind one of several milky clouds.
All the while, the tree continued its interpretation of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony across the air. Croaky and strangely harmonic, given the absence of a coherent orchestra.
Bonnie unhooked her Rez-9 firearm from her belt and pointed it at the creature. She’d seen – and had – enough, “Don’t move.”
Jelly turned around and meowed at Bonnie. The look in both her eyeballs screamed don’t shoot.
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice, young madam,” Bonnie said. “Look at it. It’s in pain. I’m doing it a favor.”
Jelly turned back to the creature.
It resembled more an ape than a scaly reptile. The sunburn blackened most of its skin. Tufts of hair had formed on it as it squealed in immense turmoil.
“Meow,” Jelly chanced her luck and crawled nearer to the pained monstrosity writhing around in front of her.
“Enough,” Bonnie cocked her Rez-9 and loomed over the crying beast. She held the gun to its head and took mercy, “Peace.”
BLAM!
She shot the ape creature in the head and jumped back when the unexpected made itself known.
“What the—?
Instead of busting the primate’s head apart and disintegrating the rest of its body, it only exacerbated the transformation.
The impact of the bullet sent a bolt of electricity through its body, cracking its shoulders out a few inches. In retaliation, the ape climbed to its feet and stomped its considerably large feet to the ground.
Bonnie kept her gun pointed at the beast. “Wh-what… are you?”
The ape slammed its furry chest with both fists and roared, frightening Jelly enough for her to run behind Bonnie’s feet for protection.
“Girl, we better get out of here. Let’s go.”
Bonnie walked backwards across the sand, keeping an eye on the ape-like creature as it screamed for vengeance. Pink tears shot down its face.
“That’s one ugly beast,” Bonnie turned around and expected to find Opera Beta sitting in the distance.
It wasn’t there. The distant apparition of Opera Alpha in the horizon had vanished, too.
“God, I must be seeing things,” she stopped in her tracks and looked down to Jelly. “Girl, where’s our ship?”
“Muuuh,” Jelly lifted her shoulders up and down, indicating that she had no clue.
ROOOOAAARRRR!
The ape’s insane exclamation forced Bonnie and Jelly to pay attention to it. They turned around, slowly, in tandem, expecting to be set-upon and mauled to death.
Instead of attacking, the ape slammed its fists against the sand. A loud grunt followed before it snorted through its widened nostrils.
Huffing around the grains of sand, it laid eyes on Jelly and grunted again. It held out its left paw, wanting Jelly to make contact.
The cat was much too afraid to oblige.
“Jelly, stay right where you are,” Bonnie tuned her ears to the tree’s attempt to reproduce Beethoven’s classic symphony, “And would you stop that damn singing!”
The tree, relentless in its insistence to continue singing, upped its volume. In turn, its rendition grew more strained and perverse.
The ape appeared not to hear it.
“Meow,” Jelly tried in a bid to win favor – or at the very least, time – with the hirsute freak standing before them.
“We have nowhere to go,” Bonnie faced the sky for some semblance of geography, “If we run, we could end up running forever.”
The light from the intense sun blanketed her face. For just a moment, she felt like she was home. Closing her eyes shut and enjoying the warmth meant the world to her, “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?”
Bonnie opened her eyes and saw the sun had split into three, larger balls of magnificence. To call it the sun was a massive anomaly. It wasn’t the sun Bonnie had enjoyed on Earth. The ball of fire she saw in the sky enlarged a few millimeters per second.
A deafening thud came from her left. “Oh, my God.”
The ape had dropped onto its side, crying and moaning to itself. Much of its hair had shed and entwined amongst the grains of sands.
The grunting turned to sobbing as the ape balled up in the fetal position. As the hair shed away to reveal a pink-white skin – like that of a human being.
“Stay there, girl,” Bonnie’s curiosity outshone the cat’s, which was a first in all the time they’d known each other. Jelly followed behind her careful not to draw attention to herself.
“Hey,” Bonnie said at the five-foot lump of skin burying its head against its stomach, “Are you okay?”
The creature moved its arms forward and covered its face. As it groaned and kicked across the dusty ground with its feet, its ape-like voice normalized into that of a human being’s.
“Sch… sch… gwup.”
The sand sticking to its sweaty skin as it rolled around.
“Whoa,” Bonnie held out her hands and tried to calm the thing down. “Hey, can you hear me?”
It removed its perfectly-formed human hands from its face. A scared and shivering man stared back at her – his face covered in pink liquid sprouting from his tear ducts.
A naked, male human being.
“Shaaa…” he gurgled and lifted his hand up, blocking out the light from the three suns. “Shaa—”
“—Here, get up,” Bonnie grabbed his hand and hoisted him to his feet. She took the opportunity to thoroughly check him over. Two arms, two legs, five fingers and toes. Overall, he appeared to be in excellent shape.
Bonnie’s eyes clamped on the one appendage that confirmed his masculinity. She looked at his face and tried to keep professional, “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
“Whu…” he said, scratching his beard and laying eyes on Jelly. “Wah!” He pointed at her, wanting to know what the furry little creature was.
“Oh, her? That’s Jelly.”
“Juh… juh…” he tried, closing his eyes, angry about his inability to replicate the sounds Bonnie was making. “Jeh…”
“Meow.”
“Meee?” The man repeated – utterly clueless – and shook his head in anger. He thumped his stomach with the underside of his fist. “Meee. Oww.”
Jelly looked to Bonnie for a reaction. This new human being was clearly insane, and probably quite volatile.
Bonnie chuckled to herself and extended her index finger. She placed her fingertip at her chest. “Bonnie.”
“Boh… boh…” the man said, fighting of the perturbation of the singing tree. “Boh… knee.”
“Yes.”
She clapped her hands together and gave the man the thumbs up. She lifted her index finger and pressed it against his chest.
“Ah,” he said, “Shaa…”
“Shaa?”
“Shanta—”
A pink tear rolled down his cheek. She flicked her finger over to his top lip and collected the liquid against her knuckle. “Do you know what this is?”
Jelly tore her gaze away from the man and looked at the tree. “Meow!”
WHUMP.
As the song slowed down the cavernous slit at the top of the tree coughed. Jelly squealed and spun her arms and hind legs around in the air in a fit of apoplectic rage.
Bonnie looked at her, deeply concerned. “Jelly!”
The confrontation between the two lasted exactly eight seconds. Then, the tree spat again.
WHUMP.
Jelly flew into a tizzy, thoroughly agitated by the noise. She extended her claws and made straight for the man standing in front of Bonnie.