Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty One

The rumbling in my belly grew worse, and the feeling began to spread out across my entire lower body. Within seconds, everything from my belly button to the tips of my toes felt like pancake dough being churned by an eggbeater. Strangely, though, everything from my waist up felt completely normal.

“Uh, guys?” I said, giving Ethan and Jade a fearful look, “Either I’m about to take an absolute mother of a dump…”

“Gross,” Ethan whispered.

“…or something really, really bad is about to happen.”

And with that, my lower body exploded! A loud rrrrip filled the room as my pants and shoes were torn to shreds in an instant. My balance changed in the blink of an eye, and I fell over with a painful thud. Some kind of…something…was happening behind me. I could feel my body sliding across the cold hospital floor, but I wasn’t moving at all. I scrambled to get my feet under me so I could stand up, and they hit the hard tiles with an unmistakable CLOP sound, like I’d just slammed two coconut halves onto the ground. When I stood up, though, my butt stayed on the floor.

I froze in horror, my expression matched perfectly by Ethan and Jade’s.

“Guys?” I asked in a timid voice. “How bad is it?”

Neither of them answered, so I forced my head to slowly turn and see what terrible fate had befallen me this time.

I froze.

“H- H- H-” I stammered, my eyes going as wide as ostrich eggs. “Hor…Horse…”

“Henry, try to stay calm,” Ethan said. “It’s just—”

“HORSEBUTT” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “HORSEBUTT! HORSEBUTT! HORSEBUTT!”

Ethan was there in an instant, grabbing my face and forcing me to look away from the HORSEBUTT! HORSEBUTT! HORSE—

“Henry, it’s just temporary!” Ethan yelled right into my face. That was enough to pull me out of my shock. “Remember? The pills only last for a day!”

“The pill turned you into some kind of centaur,” Jade added. She stepped forward and touched my horsey belly. The sensation was so weird that a chill ran down my klaon spine, into my horse spine, and the whole thing shivered. My back legs gave an involuntary kick, nearly hitting Jade.

I looked at myself in the hospital mirror, and was surprised to see that my upper body was exactly the same as it had been before. Paper white skin, blue hair, blue lips and paintmarks. And my horsebutt, while unmistakably a horsebutt, had fur the same shade of blue as my hair. I wasn’t a centaur, really, but some kind of klaontaur. Cenklaon?

“Uuuhhhhhhhnnn,” I whined. “Hoooorsebuuuutt!”

“What’s all the commotion in here?” asked a new voice.

All three of us snapped our heads around to see a nurse standing in the doorway. Her mouth fell open when she saw me sitting on the floor, half klaon, half horse, and all horrifying. Luckily, Ethan reacted quickly and slammed the door in her face. With a grunt, he shoved one of the chairs in front of it, barricading it closed.

“We need to get out of here,” I exclaimed. “If Grandpa Teddy sees me like this, he’ll kill me!”

A loud thud came from the door. It sounded like the nurse had called for backup. Concentrating, I managed to get to my feet…hooves…whatever. I raised each of my four legs one at a time, trying to get a feel for how they worked. To my surprise, now that I was standing up, I felt strangely familiar with my new body.

“Okay, but how?” Ethan asked as the door scooted the chair a few inches out of the way. He quickly pushed it back, but it wasn’t going to last long.

Good question. The only door was being guarded by klaon nurses. Apart from the window, there was nothing else that…

The window!

“Get on!” I told them before I had time to think.

Ethan blinked. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

With a bang, the door lurched on its hinges. This time, it stayed open wide enough for the nurse to reach her fingers through.

“Okay, I guess I can be comfortable with that!” Ethan shouted. There was a flash of green light as Jade zooped back into her core. Ethan hesitated for a second, and then jumped, throwing one leg over my back.

“Hey! Watch where you put those hands, buster!” I yelled.

“Now what?” he yelled back.

There was a crash, and the door was finally thrown open. The nurse, plus four others who had come to help, rushed into the room like a trained SWAT team. I didn’t have time to think this terrible idea through. Instead, I charged toward the wall, bent my horsey knees…

And jumped!

I covered my face with my arms as I flew into the hospital window, smashing through the glass. Cold wind whistled all around me as I began to fall, with Ethan’s scream of terror ringing in my ears. Watching the ground rush up to meet us, for a second I panicked too.

We hit the ground hard, and pain jolted up my horse legs. Considering I’d just jumped from a third floor window, though, my new body absorbed the impact surprisingly well. So surprisingly, in fact, that for a minute I couldn’t do anything but stand there and wonder if I was dead.

“There they are!” shouted a voice from above. I turned to see the nurse pointing at me from my room. “Don’t let them escape!”

“Henry, we’ve got to go!” Ethan shouted.

“All right, all right!” I reared dramatically up onto my back legs. “Hi ho, Silver, awa—”

Ethan yelped as he went tumbling off my back.

One quick remount, and a few angry curses later, Ethan was on my back again and I took to the streets of Mauldibamm in a breakneck gallop.

The lights and colors of the city careened past in a dizzying blur. My hair whipped out behind me in the wind as I raced through Mauldibamm, and for a minute the sheer excitement of the moment was enough to drown out my fears. The rhythm my hooves beat on the asphalt was a song that lit my blood on fire and whipped my heart into a frenzy. Was this the kind of thing Ethan felt every time he took one of those—

“Now what are we going to do?” Ethan asked, having to shout right into my ear to be heard above the wind.

And just like that, the exhilaration was gone, and the weight of all my worries and fears came crashing down on me like Ethan had suddenly gained a few hundred pounds. As much as I wanted to just keep experiencing this newness, I had to get home and help Con.

“I don’t have the Escher Cube,” I said, my horse legs guiding me through town almost on autopilot. “And Grandpa Teddy is going to have all the IW stations watched. We’ll have to think of another way to get out of Mauldibamm!”

“There are no other ways!” Ethan argued.

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Oh, Ethan, you innocent little…”

My voice trailed off when the sound I’d been dreading finally reached my ears: sirens. I craned my head around as far as I could. Sure enough, I could see flashing red lights behind us.

“Rice pudding!” I cursed.

An ambulance roared out onto the street, its siren shrill and deafening. It came around the corner too fast, sending people screaming and running for cover as it jumped the curb. Behind the wheel, I could see a klaon who looked absolutely delighted to be doing his job. As soon as he saw us, his grin widened to freakish proportions, and the engine nearly drowned out the siren as he floored the gas pedal.

“Henry, look out!”

I whipped my head forward again just in time to see a vegetable cart bearing down on us—or, more accurately, we were bearing down on it! The owner dove out of our way, but could only watch helplessly as I barreled toward his livelihood at a nearly uncontrollable speed. I braced myself for impact…

And my horse body reacted on its own, leaping over the stand so cleanly that it didn’t even touch my horse belly. I landed on the other side and kept running without a single pause—but the sound of splintering wood told me the ambulance hadn’t been able to mimic my amazing jump.

“MY VEGETABLES!” the owner screamed in dismay.

I kept running, heading further into Mauldibamm. Every time I came to an intersection, I would swerve and take off in a new direction. It didn’t help, though. No matter where I went, the ambulance stayed right on my tail—literally! And every time I failed to lose it, it got a little bit closer.

“Uh, Henry?” Ethan asked. “They’re not going to run us over, are they?”

I dug my hooves into the asphalt, almost coming to a complete stop, and then took off down a side road. The ambulance tried to copy my sudden turn, but it spun out and crashed violently into the pie shop next door. That didn’t stop them for long, though, and within seconds they had floored the gas pedal and were after us again, wipers working furiously to clean banana cream off the windshield.

“Only if they can catch us!” I answered.

“WHAT?”

“Well, why wouldn’t they?” I shot back. “They’re just going to take us back to the hospital afterwards!”

“That is wrong on so many levels, Henry!”

“It’s called efficiency!”

Ethan started yelling about a hypocrite’s oats or something…mmm, oats sounded good right then…and I wracked my brain for a way out of this mess. My hooves were starting to get tired. If I couldn’t lose those idiots soon, they’d turn us into roadkill, and who knows how long I’d be stuck in the hospital then?

I scanned the city around me. Could I go to…no, McGus, would mess me up even worse than the ambulance if I showed up at his house all horsebutted like I was. And since the IW stations were out too…

Across the street, at the local Wombo World, I spotted an unhappy looking klaon dragging a big bag of trash into the nearby alley.

You freak-a!

“Hold on!” I yelled, and put on an extra burst of speed. Ethan was almost thrown off again, but he managed to stay put by grabbing me around the throat.

I raced into the alley, nearly trampling the poor Wombo Worker—”Sorry!” I yelled over my shoulder as he ran screaming back to the restaurant—and came to a screeching halt in front of the dumpster.

“Everyone off!” I said.

“Henry, what are you—”

“Just trust me!”

Ethan gave me a worried look, but did as I said and slid off my back. Half a second later, I heard the sound of squealing brakes, and the ambulance appeared at the mouth of the alleyway. I looked at the driver through the windshield, and the wicked gleam in his eyes told me he knew he had us cornered. If my plan didn’t work, it would be back to the hospital.

For all of us.

“Henry?” Ethan asked anxiously.

“Just a second!”

I looked at the dumpster, then turned my back to it. I raised my back leg…

BOOM BOOM BA-BOOM BOOM!

“Shave and a haircut,” I whispered as I beat the familiar rhythm into the huge metal container with my hoof.

The ambulance roared into the alleyway.

“Henry!” Ethan yelled.

I fought down the panic. Why wasn’t anything happening? Had I gotten it wrong? Was my rhythm—

BOOM BOOM! came the answer from inside the dumpster.

“Quick, jump in!” I yelled.

We had three seconds before the ambulance hit us.

Ethan looked at me, shocked. “Are you serious?”

Two seconds.

“JUST DO IT!” I screamed.

To my relief, he did it. Giving the ambulance one last look, Ethan threw himself into the dumpster like a world champion belly flopper.

One second!

I jumped in after him, and was instantly swallowed by darkness. Somewhere down below, Ethan was screaming. There was a deafening CRASH above me, and the light shining through the dumpster’s opening vanished as the ambulance slammed into it at a hundred miles per hour. But it didn’t hit me. It couldn’t.

Because now I was falling, falling, falling…