Caterina struggled to contain the thoughts rampaging through her brain. Scattered ideas and images collided there, creating a convoluted maze which kept her a prisoner of her own mind. The images surprised her, prompting other vague memories of unending darkness.
Unwelcome darkness that had lasted for too long. That had been accompanied by pain only…
Little pain remained anymore and the darkness was gone, replaced by bright images swirling around in her brain, a weird melding of colors reminiscent of a Peter Max painting.
Peter Max.
She forced herself to focus, remembering other pictures and artists. Lots and lots of paintings and artists while people milled about.
Had she been an artist as well? she wondered, confused about who and what she was as she gazed around again at the multihued shapes surrounding her. As unnatural as the colors were, she was grateful she could see, suddenly aware that she hadn’t been able to do so in some time.
Trees.
Bushes.
Birds twittered overhead. A tiny flash of brown and white scurried into the underbrush.
She was outdoors, which meant…
She was free.
She had escaped.
Escaped, she realized, honing in on that idea as she tried to make sense of the thoughts and memories creating havoc in her brain. Finally a picture formed in her mind of a hospital.
No, not a hospital. An office maybe? Or a lab? Yes, a lab.
At some point she had escaped from one of the cells in the lab. The day before or maybe the day before that. She couldn’t remember. And now she was in the woods, she realized as she skirted the edge of a stand of scraggly pines, their fragrant needles soft beneath her feet.
A step later, Caterina stubbed her toe on an exposed root.
Fearful of discovery, she contained her cry of pain and examined her foot. Like everything around her, the colors were off.
Bright yellow-green blood at the tip of her stubbed toe glowed against the darker browns of dirt and leaves along the rest of her foot.
Caterina forced herself to focus on that appendage, gathering her thoughts. Reality momentarily returned, restoring with it the peachy hues of her healthy human skin, although something else was odd.
The nasty stub at the end of her toe was already healing.
The only thing that remained from the injury was a bit of phosphorescent yellow-green on the ragged wood of the root where she had stubbed her toe.
Impossibly wrong. Her toe should still hurt. And her blood should be red.
Try as she might to connect her thoughts to understand, whatever was happening to her—within her—made no sense.
A sudden loud thumping noise came at her, like the insistent beat of a timpani drum. At first it beat at a regular pace but soon became a rapid roll as the sound came closer.
Wump, wump, wump, quickly and persistently. Over and over as the sound approached, battering the air viciously. The noise was strong enough to become a physical pulse against her body.
She had to avoid the noise.
Caterina hunkered down beneath the lower branches of one of the more thickly needled evergreens in the Pine Barrens. The sound intensified as did the wind, which whirled fallen leaves and needles around and around the base of the tree. The helicopter making the din paused overhead and the branches of the pine whipped wildly against her naked body. Caterina remained immobile, hugging the trunk of the tree, digging her fingers into the wood to hold on.
The tree trunk gave easily beneath her fingers, surprising her, but providing her with a firm grasp as she tried to blend in beneath the branches of the evergreen.
Danger was near.
Danger from the helicopter kicking up the air and foliage around her.
Closing her eyes and letting out a soft mewl of fear, she burrowed deeper against the thick trunk of the pine, hoping she wouldn’t be seen.
She couldn’t go back to the lab.
After long minutes, the helicopter moved on with a loud screaming whir, but Caterina remained in her protective squat, waiting. Her fingers dug as deep as her knuckles into the tree trunk until she extracted them, sticky with sap.
It would be night again soon, she realized as she looked around.
She glanced at her fingers—tacky from pine sap, with an odd cast to the skin. She tried to make sense of her actions and the strange color but couldn’t.
Immediately after came the vision of those fingers rapidly shifting against strings. Pressing against smoothly shaped wood, producing sensually rich sound.
Producing music.
Her music.
She grabbed hold of those ideas, hoping the fragmented ideas would finally come together to make sense. She didn’t know how long she remained there, rooted to the spot, trying to collect her thoughts, but the strain in her legs grew steadily until her muscles screamed in agony.
Caterina finally gave into the call of her body, rose, and stepped away from the protective embrace of the evergreen. But even as she did so, the deep green of the pine needles remained wrapped around her skin as she stepped out into the open.
She studied her hands and feet. Her skin had assumed the color of the verdant woods around her.
I’m human, but my skin isn’t normal, she thought as the full impact of her condition hit her.
Shaking her head to clear the illogical vision, she then noticed something familiar, despite the odd colors that had returned to her vision, creating almost a kaleidoscopic blur. As she locked her gaze on one spot in the distance, the images sharpened.
Lights.
Those were lights up ahead. And lights meant something good. Something better than the woods around her.
That recollection triggered a string of other ideas which finally coalesced into a more complex understanding about herself.
She had been at the lab because she was sick, but had escaped to be safe.
With that realization immediately came another.
She was naked.
Or at least she thought she was, gazing down at herself.
Her skin had that odd cast to it. When she touched her stomach, the sap-sticky pads of her fingers met the softer skin of her midsection. The deep green of the pine tree covered most of her body, but near her ankles the tone of her skin blended to the color of the earth at her feet.
Impossibly wrong, she thought again.
As wrong as the now fully healed stub of her toe and the way she had been able to shove her fingers into the trunk of the evergreen.
She had to hide until reason returned and provided some answers as to what was happening, but she couldn’t walk around naked.
She should have grabbed some clothes when she had made her escape, only…
Visions battered her brain, driving her to her knees.
So much blood.
On the floor and walls.
All over Dr. Wells.
She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth for a moment as she forced away the disturbing memories and marshaled her thoughts.
She would have to find some clothes once she went…
Where am I going? she asked herself, standing and examining the bloodstains on her body.
The realization rushed through her, surprising her with its clarity and bringing immense joy.
I’m going home.