My Regeneration

This story finished first in its round at the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest.

My Regeneration

by Kevin Lenihan and Dena McKinnon

Quickly now, children, into the pool! Hurry, the monsters can't swim.

But we can't either!

Hold onto the tube, it'll be ok.

Gretchen, the oldest, was six. I wouldn't put it past her to somehow
have picked up a bit of swimming somewhere. Clever girl. Poor dears,
clinging in a circle around the inner tube. Such terrors, no child
should have to deal with it.

They all streamed tears but Gretchen. She studied my face with the
intensity of a shrink. Clever girl.

I pushed them out into the middle of the pool with the skimmer.

What about you, Mommy?

That was Billy, a year younger than Gretchen. Sweet Billy, always my
favorite if I were to have one, but I don't play favorites.

Mama will be ok, I told them.

But the monsters?!

Mama is changing, children. Mama is becoming something new. And the
new mama can fight the monsters!

The lights flickered and the children screamed, all but
Gretchen, who just studied my face. My dears, my children, I
must protect them.

Alice looked down to the bottom of the pool.

What is that, mama?

Little eggs lined the pool's floor.

Those are chocolate eggs, darling. For later.

All the way here I had told the children of the apocalypse. The end of
the world. No more telemarketing, no more counselors from school, no
more inquiries by Child Services, no more warnings at the end of
pharmaceutical commercials, all the things that could happen but
never would, no more heat waves and that stupid clickety fan and no
more shrinks shrinks shrinks...

The eggs at the bottom of the pool began to vibrate.

Mama!

Even Gretchen looked down in terror. They kicked their little feet and
tried to reach the side of the pool, but with the skimmer it was easy
to push them back.

Don't worry, children, that's nothing, the monsters are outside of the
pool, now be good and stay away from the side.

It had all begun with a chocolate egg two days ago. I had pealed the
foil and eaten it, I could remember it so clearly.

Or maybe not so clearly. Sometimes it seemed as if I had swallowed that
egg whole, and there had been no foil. Later I had found more eggs,
had stepped on one, making it squirt rich caramel...only maybe it
wasn't caramel. It seemed more like the creamy guts of some insect.

Ever since I had swallowed that egg I could hear the noise better.
That noise I had told them about, those shrinks, and no one would
listen! That chittering chattering swishing swooshing gnawing at the
back of my head. It had been there a long time, before the apocalypse
had begun, even before he had left us. But after I swallowed that
bitter egg it was almost as if I could understand that scratchy
chatter.

The tinfoil on the eggs at the bottom of the pool began to tear.
Something clawing their way out. The children screamed and thrashed
and kicked.

Mama, please!

Hush, now, you'll draw their attention.

My four dears quieted, holding onto the tube for life. I would do
anything to save my children, what else do I got in this world?

The lights flickered again, and an air raid siren or something similar
could be heard very far away.

The first sign of the apocalypse had been when the cell phone
went out. How much we've come to depend on those things. And
then the lights went out a few days later. No more rickety fan,
no more infomercials, no more angry ladies of the View. Soon
all the food on the shelves was gone and money was no good
anyway. The children, they did bicker...and then I found that
egg. fterward, the noise told me that there was only one way to
save us all. Only one way to save my children. And the noise
told me they weren't my children anyway, they didn't belong to
the real me, not the me I was becoming.

I looked at my reflection in the glass wall. By all outward
appearances I looked the same, but I knew I had changed. I had
completely metamorphosed. No longer did I have bones within my
body. I had developed an exoskeleton, a hard shell just beneath
my skin. Tapping my abdomen I could feel it. Beneath that would
be that same creamy pudding innards I had seen in the stepped-on
egg. Like what's inside a beetle. It was with a long appendage
that I poked at that inner tube to keep the children safe
within the center of the pool. And it was an appendage with a
stinger, I had to be careful to keep it tucked away, for my
darlings could not swim, except for maybe that clever
Gretchen, had to keep my eye on her.

Fast slithering things began to escape from the eggs, and they
swarmed toward the children, the water becoming a bloody froth,
air hissing from the tube, Gretchen never taking her gaze from
me, her eyes pleading.

Mama, they screamed.

But I was not their mama. Someone had stolen me and stolen my
life andthrown me into that role, and I had tried, for those
children were precious, whose ever they were. Somehow the air
raid siren was louder now. Little Alice grabbed onto my
appendage and I let the stinger get her. Gretchen grabbed at it,
clever courageous Gretchen, who clutched even as her fingers
were sliced, and it turned out Gretchen could not swim, or maybe
it was Billy that dragged her down. They were being saved from
the apocalypse, it was a good thing. I felt like I should cry,
but I had been regenerated, and the thing I now had
become did not cry.