The Return of Scrunch Girl I

Sixteen Years Ago

The creature sobbed plaintively in the shadows, its voice faltering into an unsettling hoarse cry caught between human and animal. Like all nightmares it was the presence of the ordinary about the alien that tempted belief in this impossible situation. Where else would you find a monster but in the dark corner of your bedroom?

As a young boy, Daniel Majewski had heard many horrors waiting for him in the dark. Usually, they made an instant exit when the light was turned on, and quick investigations under the bed and in the wardrobe would make sure there weren’t any stragglers left behind to attack when Danny finally went to bed. At sixteen, he didn’t expect to finally meet one of his night visitors, a real monster.

A monster whose name he knew.

‘Okay, Ann, I’m going to switch on the light.’ Even now, Danny entertained the possibility that when he turned on his lamp the thing in the corner might vanish.

‘No!’ growled the thing, the word rattling like a threat rather than a plea. Then gentler, ‘No Danny. You’ll freak if you see me. Let’s… let’s think things through before we do anything.’

An awkward silence followed of the sort that fell between friends who had outgrown each other. It was a crucial moment, one that could only be salvaged by courage and radical thought.

‘Tell me how this happened, Ann,’ asked Danny. ‘I can’t help you if I don’t understand’. His desire to aid his friend was genuine, but it was curiosity, a burning need to immerse himself in the substance of this incredible situation, that motivated his actions.

‘I am a freak,’ announced the creature called Ann, her inhuman tongue struggling to form its words. ‘Since the age of eleven I have been able to alter my appearance as I wish, as easily as anyone else might change the expression upon their face. One night I wished my eyes were blue; by morning they were the colour of an empty sky. Before I could comprehend what was happening, they reverted, my reflection’s gaze darkening as I watched. I might’ve have turned away and dismissed it then as nothing more than the waking remnants of my dreams. Instead I stared harder into that mirror, my heart pounding with excitement as, at my command, my eyes faded to blue again. I loosed a stray thought and they became green, black, violet even, with simply a minimum of effort. I ran to school that day, hoping the time would race by. I was eager to return home to the privacy of my room and the opportunity to explore this new discovery more thoroughly.’

Danny peered into the gloom. He had begun to recognise something of his old friend in the sad way she was unburdening herself, the melancholy tone being familiar even if the voice using it was not. Could the sleek, crouched shape in the darkness really be Ann?

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been blessed with imagination,’ she continued. ‘It amazes me now to realize that for nearly a month I contented myself with changing the colour of my eyes. It never occurred to me that my abilities could reach further than that. I wonder, if it wasn’t for Catherine Miller would I ever have known I could become anyone I wanted? Or that I’d come to where I am tonight?’

‘Catherine Miller?’

‘Catherine Miller had eyes like sapphires. I’d never spoken more than a dozen words to her, but I had envied those eyes from afar, so much so that even when I learned of my power, I had been too intimidated to mimic them. That blue was her birthright. I could only pretend, form a copy of the superior original. Until at last, I dared, and imagined myself with eyes just as rich, just as clear as hers. I smiled into my bedroom mirror in satisfaction as my irises shifted to the hue I’d desired for so long. I could see that unearthly blue, just as it had dominated Catherine’s face earlier that day. I remembered how she had looked as I had engineered a short, meaningless conversation with her in order to study my subject more closely. Slowly, without warning, that memory bloomed into the present before my eyes.

‘To my credit, I realised what was happening much quicker this time. As my skin lightened to Catherine’s pale complexion, and borrowed freckles spattered about the bridge of my nose I laughingly accepted this new wonder, impatient to see it through to its conclusion. An exaggerated smile and my face rounded to match her plumper features, a slight twitch of the nose caused that to flatten, and a stretch of my scalp shortened and curled my hair. Without thinking, I redirected the undefinable influence that had recoloured my eyes and in seconds my customary dark brown locks had become a lively shining copper. Catherine Miller’s eyes were confronted with the unmistakeable likeness of Catherine Miller.’

Ann lost herself in the thrill of recollection. For a while she lost sight of her current dilemma, but it soon became apparent she hadn’t completely forgotten.

‘How long have we known each other, Danny?’ asked Ann.

‘I don’t know. Since infant school, definitely. What, ten years? More?’

‘It’s almost exactly eleven years, Dan. The playground at St Jude’s. Someone, I don’t know who, kicked a ball right into my face. It was my first nosebleed, I remember being terrified as the blood dripped over my dress. That’s how I feel now: scared like a little girl who doesn’t know any better.’

Danny nodded, the scene slowly piecing together from the corners of his memory.

‘Everybody laughed then. Why wouldn’t they? They were just kids. But you didn’t, Danny. I don’t think you had a clue what to do, but you picked me up and told me it’d be all right. Can you imagine a seven-year-old doing that? You took me to Miss Osborne and she took me to the nurse. She cleaned me up – I wasn’t that badly hurt. I remember being pleased because I got to have the rest of the day off.’

Despite himself, Danny let out a laugh. Ann replied with a guttural noise that might have been the same.

‘That’s the very moment we became friends. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you got an odd phone call asking for your bedroom window to be left open, for you not to come in until I was certain I was hidden. I’m frightened, Danny, and you’re the only person I know that makes me brave.’

Danny stood up and walked to the far side of his room, deliberately giving Ann more space physically and emotionally.

‘You’ve told me how you’ve got here, Ann. But you still haven’t said what’s happened. Is it your powers? Has something gone wrong with them?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Ann. ‘I think I might have tried to use them wrongly. I…, I think I’ve overstepped the mark.’

‘What do you mean?’

Ann stirred, as if she was preparing to move out of the darkness. Danny held his breath, but Ann paused, freezing the moment.

‘I told you I had little imagination, didn’t I? It’s true. Since the day I became Catherine Miller I’ve been over a thousand other people: pop stars, actresses, models. Rarely venturing outside my own house, occasionally using my abilities to customise my own body. Becoming a new person altogether from features stolen out of films and photographs, congratulating myself on my own ingenuity. All the while staying safely within the limits of humanity. Until the obvious thought finally occurred to me: why not change my form completely, become a beast or a bird? Just how far could I take these powers?’

Ann stepped into the wash of tired orange light that invaded the corner of the room between her and Danny. Shadows sculpted themselves into solidity and she was revealed.

‘I guess I found out the answer to that tonight,’ whispered Ann.

Danny caught himself gasping. His thoughts stumbled as what he imagined he’d see fell short of what now stood before him.

The goddess Bast reincarnated. A cat-woman with the head of a panther and the body of a frail teenage girl, bent slightly as if unsure whether to walk upright or on all fours. In the half-light Danny could see the black fur that covered her borrowed face, running down her neck and shoulders, stretching out to the claws that ended each arm. It thinned out along her human torso, reaching no lower than her hips. Below this, two incongruous fleshy legs quivered.

‘It’s a curious feeling, fur creeping over your skin. When I decided to try an animal the first thing that sprang to mind was ‘Cat People’.

‘Nastassja Kinski,’ said Danny.

‘Simone Simon,’ asserted Ann. ‘There just seemed to be something natural, undeniably feminine about a panther, in a way that a wolf or a lion wasn’t. So, I went to my mirror, my lone confidante, and tried to make myself a cat.

‘It started well enough. My features reshaped, albeit a little more extremely than usual, and I let the hair spread from my head to the rest of my body. Hands into paws was unsettling but not beyond me. It was with the tail that it started to go wrong.’

Ann turned and showed Danny the base of her spine. There, a small hairless stump like the docked tail of a dog wriggled agitatedly.

‘As it started to protrude, I suddenly became aware of how alien all this was. I panicked, fearful of losing myself, my identity. Before I had worn masks, now I was playing the part for real. It was in that moment that lost my focus and my transformation halted. At first, I willed it to continue, hoping to recapture some of the momentum before it faded completely. Nothing happened. If I had been afraid at becoming an animal, I was terrified at being trapped between two worlds. I tried to undo the change. Again, nothing. Danny, I haven’t slept since last night. I left a note at my Mum and Dad’s saying I’ve gone to Sara’s in Liverpool for the weekend. They’re going to kill me, but do you know, that’s the least of my worries at the moment. What can I do?’

The two friends held each other’s gaze for a minute or so. Without a word, Danny sat on the end of the bed and gestured for Ann to join him. Hesitating at first, she eventually perched uneasily next to him. Danny offered an arm to her, and before she realised what she was doing Ann had collapsed against him, her tears returning. This time she didn’t fight against them.

‘Oh Ann, what can I do?’ said Danny. ‘This isn’t a nosebleed. I wouldn’t know where to start.

What you’ve told me is beyond me, beyond anyone I’d suspect. But then…’

He lifted Ann’s unrecognizable face from his chest and spoke to whatever part of his friend that remained.

‘The only person this isn’t beyond is you, Ann. No-one else knows how to do the things that you do. You’ve lived with little miracles all this time. Like you’ve said, only your imagination has limited you in the past. You’ve already done the impossible on a daily basis. I can’t see how what you’ve tried to do could be “more” impossible. That’d be nonsense. It’s just more difficult to believe. And while becoming a panther might be a tricky thing to swallow, being yourself shouldn’t be too big a leap of faith. I bet you’ve done it before. Besides, I don’t think cats can cry.’

Ann laughed, a human laugh.

‘Oh, they can, Danny. I know they can.’ She stood up.

‘It’s funny. When I finally came to terms with the fact that I could become anyone I wanted, I wondered what reason I might have to change back to myself. Apart from friends and family, of course. Why bother with “me”?’

She shifted the weight of her misshapen body, stretching her muscles and rolling her neck like a runner preparing for a sprint.

‘There was only one reason I could think of: because I wanted to. The same reason you eat your favourite food, read your favourite book, return home when you’ve finished all you’ve set out to do. You’re right, Danny. I can imagine being me very easily.’

Abruptly, Ann stopped her warming up and stood stock still. She inhaled sharply, then closed her piercing panther eyes. Instantly, the black coat she’d worn throughout her ordeal vanished, and her own hair returned, long, lank, hanging untidily over her face and still-pointed ears. Claws retracted and thumbs reformed as she regained her hands. Her backbone straightened and she drew herself up to her full height, which now came to the other side of six feet. Finally, her lips, cheeks and nose found their original positions. Without opening her eyes, she addressed her friend.

‘How do I look?’

Danny regarded Ann’s tall, skinny, naked frame, his mind too dazed by tonight’s adventure to form any sex-related thoughts.

‘Very ordinary,’ he replied.

‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ said Ann. ‘But since that was the object of the exercise that’s probably a good thing.’ She opened her eyes revealing two slit pupils resting in golden irises. Danny jumped.

‘Your eyes haven’t changed!’ he exclaimed.

Ann smiled. ‘I know. I thought I’d keep them this way for a while. I think I’m confident enough in the eye changing department to exercise my imagination in this way, at least. Besides, It’s a useful reminder of just what a freak I am.’

Danny rose from the bed. He took off his shirt and offered it to Ann.

‘I don’t think you’re a freak. I think you’re a marvel.’

Ann put on the shirt and kissed him.