The End

My favorite words.I just finished Draft Number Two, the wholly improved, spectacular rewrite of my Young Adult Science Fiction novel, Cycler.Here's a taste from the opening chapter.[Mom warning: explicit material. Sorry]Chapter 1JillThe gods of change have it in for me.I’m dreaming senseless pretty things. Specifically, I’m walking barefoot through the woods behind my house. It’s fall and the flame-colored leaves float softly downward. A ferris wheel with no riders appears out of nowhere and I get on without a ticket. That’s when the gods of change wake up, flex their muscles and start to squeeze.My senseless pretty dream sours. Night falls and the ferris wheel won’t stop. It speeds up, breaks free from its foundation and rolls through the darkened woods. Shearing tree branches with loud splintery crunches, it rolls toward the black lake at the edge of the tree line.The gods of change growl from deep within me, behind organs, beneath muscles.“No!”I open my eyes to the real night, the thick molasses darkness of it. But it’s only when I spot the red numbers of my digital clock that I’m sure I’m awake. Four twenty-seven AM. The pain is building to a sure and steady climax and I don’t know who I am.Jack or Jill.The gods of change fire a shot deep into my gut.“God damn it!” I squeeze through clenched teeth.There’s a landmine exploding outward from my stomach and lower spine.I’m not supposed to wake up in the middle of things. The gods of change are supposed to conduct their dark routines while I slumber.I reach beneath the sheets, praying, hoping the transformation is nearly complete, but the hard muscular ridges of my abdomen void that hope. When I reach lower, there it is--limp, smooth and insistent.Jack.I hate Jack. He’s supposed to fade in the night and I’m supposed to wake up fully constructed. Instead I have his thing to contend with and a murderous still-growing ache that, now that I think of it, is not exploding outward but rather sucking inward like a vortex."In stillness, I am true."That’s one of my mantras.“In stillness, I am true.”I say it aloud, but it does nothing to ease the pain.The muscles of my abdomen flicker in spasm and I squeeze Jack’s thing in response, as if he were doing this to me, the sadistic jerk. I know that’s not true. Grabbing the pillow with my other hand, I press it to my face.“No,” I growl. “Make it STOP!”As my back arches of its own volition, I bite the pillow hard. I don’t want to scream, but I can’t stop myself.“No!”I’m lost now, a rudderless ship on a wild and cruel ocean.“Mom!”I know she can’t help. No one can help. This is something I have to endure. My sentence, my stigmata.“Mom!”Through the muffling pillow, I hear the bedroom door open. Then the bed sags with Mom’s weight as she peels the pillow from my face. Her perfect brown bob is sleep-mussed and her pale face bears deep pillow wrinkles.“Sh,” she says. “It’s okay, honey. I’m right here. Breathe.”I want to absorb relief from the forced calm of her hard face but I can’t. Looking past her, I spot Dad in the doorway, hovering, disheveled as always and chewing on his thumbnail.Then the split begins.From the base of Jack’s thing the pain gathers to a diamond point. I grab Mom’s cool hand and squeeze.“Breathe, baby,” she says.The flesh punctures from within. Then Zipper-like it tears itself open. I throw my head from side to side, manic for an escape from the pain.“Sh,” Mom says. But I can hear the strain in her voice. She’s starting to panic, just like me.That’s what pain is. That’s what pain does. It robs your humanity, turns you into a mindless convulsing beast.“Here, sweetie.” She holds the pillow to my face and I grab it, bite it, try to swallow it whole.The split now complete beneath the quivering odalisque of Jack’s thing, I try to pull my legs together. I don’t know why. Protective instinct, I guess. But I can’t control my legs or any other part of my body. The gods of change are in control, orchestrating their demonic proceedings from the angry vortex at the base of my spine.The vortex sucks harder now, pulling at my bones, my muscles, retracting my thighs, melting the hard muscles of my stomach until it’s soft and doughy. They remake me with no mercy, sanding the crisp edges from my jawbone, deflating the gentle bicep, brutally inflating my breasts.“Stop it!” I scream, all sense gone.“Sh,” Mom says. “Breathe, baby.”But every breath is a new gut wound. The bones of my ankles rearrange themselves in miniature. Even my toes protest the maddening suddenness of the change. Unthinkingly, I clench Jack’s thing with my sweaty hand, forcing the breath out angrily, rhythmically.“That’s right,” Mom says. “Breathe.”With the fragmented remains of my assaulted humanity I can still remember, I can still think. Jackthoughts, Jackfears, Jackdesires. He’s angry. At me. At Mom. He doesn’t like chunky peanut butter and she keeps feeding it to him. He wants a new pair of Calvins and some Elvis DVD’s.“Get out of my mind!”I clench Jack’s thing harder now and it slips weakly from my slick palm into the sucking mouth of the vortex.And then it’s gone.All of it.Not just Jack, but the pain too. That’s the merciful afterthought of this wicked hullabaloo. The pain doesn’t fade slowly the way it builds. It evaporates in a euphoric instant.I look up at Mom’s ever-calm face, backlit from the hall light spilling through the open door. She whisks a strand of hair from her eyes then touches my cheek with the backs of her fingers. “Go to sleep,” she says.But I don’t want to sleep. I want this heavenly release to last forever. I’ve earned it.I lift my head to look at Dad. His greasy hair and guru beard connect in a continuous circle of grunge around his frightened face. He’s the same mess he has been for years. But I’m so blissed out on post-agony, I can’t help but love the guy.“Sorry Dad,” I say.“It’s okay, honey.” But he’s still chewing on his thumbnail because it’s not okay and he knows it. It’s never going to be okay either. Not for him, not for me. Not for any member of the McTeague household.Within this house is a monster, an anomaly, a freak, a slave to the calendar and the lunatic hormones of adolescence. Every menstrual cycle--every phase of the moon if you want to be romantic about it--I am savagely transformed from girl to boy for four full days then wickedly reshaped into girlflesh again. When I’m lucky enough to sleep through the change, I have only to cope with the mortifying fall out of being a freak of nature.But don’t pity me. Not now. Not while I’m floating in the bliss of mercy hormones. Pity me tomorrow. Or the next time I wake up in the middle of things.“Goodnight,” I say.Within seconds I’m out.