Sorry, The Only Power Left Is Alteration.

The next thing she heard was coughing. It was her cough! What happened!? Had she survived? She thrust her torso with a deep gasping panicked breath. Glasses bounced on her thin nose. Knees buckled as she stood up to brush off her cargo shorts. Bent over posture meant she was looking at the floor. A smooth dull gray polished marble style finish surrounded her feet. Circe looked to her lower left, then to her lower right, but she couldn’t see tile lines.

Panic returned as Circe began to forcefully pat her clothes and touch her face. Slender fingers tugged at her short brown hair. The forefinger brushed over her front teeth. A bit of scum was on the surface but they weren’t missing.

“I died right,” she muttered to herself, “That weird girl on the television screens tricked me and I got hit by a bus, right?”

Her head pounded so badly that she needed to grasp it. It felt like she had been hit by a bus. Slowly, the pain and throbbing subsided as if someone was turning down the bass line in her head.

“C’mon, pull yourself out of it, chin up, posture check, right?”

Circe clasped her hands over her mouth. Suddenly the sounds coming out were strange, foreign to her. Everything she said was perfectly understood, but she wasn’t speaking English!

“What the heck is going on?” she muttered

She covered her mouth again. This was going to take some getting used to. The intonation and voice structure remained the same though, even though the sound patterns were not familiar.

The interior of a massive cave-like structure spread before her. The ceiling twinkled with phosphorescence. The walls glowed with little twinkling bits as well, but she was near the center of the cavern which stretched a difficult distance to run in all directions.

There were people! Lots of them stood about bickering with one another or looking just as confused and lost as her. She glanced left, then right. The greater portion of the crowd assembled around the walls, probably looking for an escape.

Circe squinted, lifted her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. The cavern absorbed most of the sound of conversations closer to the walls. Circe found herself mostly alone and ignored.

“Last one to take action as always, right?”

Palms smacked against her cheeks. Perhaps taking stock of her situation would prove a diversion. Well, the place looked safe enough, for now. The air had a dryness to it and the temperature struck a balance between too hot and too cold. That said, food and water might prove an issue.

“Cannibalism!” she gasped, tugging at her hair, “I don’t want to die like that, just let me get hit by the bus. Oh heck, oh heck, what am I going to do!? No, no, just calm down, don’t panic. You’ve been in worse situations before. You’ve been chased by loan sharks that want to break both your legs. At the very least you’ve escaped from that problem. And it’s never wise to jump to conclusions, right? That’s what mom always says.”

Circe pushed her palms against her ears. A presence in this room had great power. It flew about on little wings. There was enough insanity to drive her mad. But then the feeling passed and Circe felt okay.

“Eeeey! Fried eggs, fancy meetin’ yuh here!” said the man with the pot gut who had been wearing the track suit from earlier. He waved to her and she couldn’t spot a hiding place, not even a column to scoot behind! So Circe decided to stiffen her pose and face danger straight on.

“I don’t have any money!” she found herself screaming at the top of her lungs, “I can’t pa-”

The big guy stopped an blink, the rubbed the back of his head, “Yeah, sorry about dat. But your duh only guy I know in this crackerjack box. So I figured, yuh know, we could help each other out all nice and easy like. And maybe, yuh know, we can fuggeda about dat money yuh owe the boss. I’ll take duh hit. No worries.”

Circe blinked.

“Really, you’ll just let it go, and all I have to do is get us out of here!?”

“Yah, somepin like that, I don’t like caves. They give me duh heebie jeebies. True story, my old woman left me in a cave once, I had to climb through-”

Circe put her hand up, “Talk to the hand Alf, because the face don’t care.”

“Right, right, back to business,” he said, “You’re one of them booky types, so I figure, Fried Eggs gotta know something bout it. Or at least she’s gonna catch on real fast like. So have yuh figured anything out yet?”

“I was trying to figure it out when you scared me half to death,” Circe said, feeling more at ease, “And how can I even trust you, you were trying to break my legs before I got hit by that bus!?”

“Woah, woah, woah, Fried Eggs, yuh gonna go and hurt my feel-”

Circe put her had up. Alf stood at six feet and a few inches to spare, so getting a hand rudely in front of his face meant reaching up and even arcing her feet.

“My name is Circe, call me that again and the deal is off. Plus, you will be removed from my Chaos-horde server.”

“Fine, fine, no more fried eggies. Don’t wanna hurt yer fee-fees,” he huffed, “Fine, Circe it is, but yuh have-ta start calling me Alfredo. I ain't some little brown furry alien.”

Circe puffed out her cheeks before releasing a sigh, “First of all let’s take stock of the situation,”

“Yeah, let’s do that, but don’t yuh think maybe we should be checkin’ the walls wit duh main group?”

A petite finger wagged in his face, “I find that the best thing to do is in this sort of the situation is to keep away from the main crowd. Too many things can go wrong.”

“I see, that’s why you’re the brains of this operation. I woulda never thunk it like that.”

A curious gaze at his grizzled face indicated she didn’t know whether the big guy was being serious or sarcastic. Circe pulled at her clothes and dusted.

“As far as supplies go, I only have the clothes I was wearing and there is nothing in my pockets.”

Alfredo pulled a device out of his track suit, “Well, this is yours, yuh dropped it when I was tryin’ to have a word wit yuh.”

A quick hand swiped the red phone with a now cracked screen from his greasy palm. Gross, now there was fat old guy all over her phone. The screen and case rubbed against her shirt, that would have to do for now. Fingers tapped on the screen and unlocked it.

“Thanks,” she said, “No signal, no internet. Not that it matters because they cut me off anyway. I'll try to save the battery.”

“Didn’t pay yer phone bill either, guess that figures. For a smart one yuh sure are bad wit money. I’m gonna be tourin' the Hudson in cement shoes cause of my soft heart.”

“Are you done with the lecture? Could you tell me what happened to you before you found yourself here, with me?”

“Well, yuh see, so I was tryin' tuh talk tuh yuh about that money yuh owe me when yuh turned the corner and everything became all psychedelic like. Then this awful music started playing. But here’s the best part, there wuz a beautiful girl in leather wit duh best set of garbanzos yuh ever seen. We’re talking some-”

“Skip that part, what did she say to you and what happened afterwards?”

“Okay, ummm, well, she wuz all over me, of course, an asked me if I wanted tuh play a game. I wasn’t about tuh turn er down either. Then she told me tuh look up toward the stars. Next thing I know, duh scaffolding shook loose an a bolt fastener smacks my skull! Come tuh think of it, probly went clean through my head. Guess this means we’re dead, aight?”

“I very much think we might be dead,” Circe said as she sat down with her legs crossed.

“Wuhtcha doin?” Alfredo asked.

“The only thing we can do, patiently wait for our judgement.”

Alfredo nodded and sat down beside her. He gave a sigh, the let his belly push out over his lap. He reached for his knees, but it proved a bit of a struggle. A crack issued forth from his back as he tried to stretch. Circe remained motionless, kept her hands on her knees, and breathed calmly. Tears began to run down her cheeks. Then the sniffling started. It looked like she was ready to start bawling.

“Aww, hey, don’t cry now,”

“The last thing you tell someone who is crying is to stop crying!” Circe said.

Alfredo frowned, looked away for a moment, tried to stretch some more, “Well, if it makes yuh feel any better. We won’t have tuh worry about all that debt anymore.”

“I was going to call my mom,” Circe wiped tears from her eyes, “We haven’t spoken in three months. I was going to apologize and go back to Vermont. I was going to set things right and pay everything off, even if it meant working three jobs that I hate and never reading a book again.”

“I get makin' good wit yer old woman, but duh rest sounds like givin' up on yer dream tuh me,”

“What would a fat, ugly, balding, old man with a nose the size of Yonkers know about dreams!?”

Alfredo didn’t say anything as his eyes watered up.

“Ain't much at all I guess,” he said quietly, “Ain't much.”