Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu by Storm Constantine Page A

way; then
someone hit me from behind and sent me sprawling to the concrete
floor. I tried to pick myself up, but a hard boot slammed against
my head and sent me crashing into oblivion.
    When I awoke, I found myself in
a large room, without much light. I quickly realized I was naked,
my skin crusted with sweat and filth. It didn’t take me much longer
to realize I was trapped with others, who were in a similar state
to myself. At first, I tried talking to these anonymous figures,
but the oppressiveness of the room and the starkness of our
situation soon left each one of us alone with our own thoughts.
Thoughts crowded into my head: I had been sold into slavery, or
kidnapped by some strange cult, or even that I would be forced to
take part in some sinister government experiment. In the end, when
the Uigenna came to drag us away and strapped me down to the stone
table, I had given up trying to figure out what had happened, but
found in myself a strange determination to get out of it somehow,
to get out and become something more than a statistic of another
inexplicable disappearance.
    I open my eyes and gaze up at
the lights above me. My body feels strange, different somehow.
Looking down at myself, I see the straps have gone. I’m lying on a
cot instead of a cold stone table. I’m covered with a thin grey
blanket, my body’s shape visible beneath the fabric. At once, I sit
upright, my head reeling. This can’t be real. The rolls of fat have
gone, as if they melted away in that terrible crucible of heat and
pain. What’s left behind is a body lithe and willowy. And I can see
myself clearly, without the thick glasses I’ve needed all my life.
Warily, I lift the corner of the blanket to see what lies beneath.
Something has been done to me. Something beyond words. This body is
not mine: it can’t be. I’m not sure if it’s even male any more.
    I lie back in the silence,
unable even to think. I lie still, very still. I stare at the
cracked ceiling.
    Then a shadow falls over me and
a voice murmurs, ‘So, our sleeping beauty awakens.’ It is the
stranger from the basement: the tall, slender figure in ebony,
ivory and indigo. He smiles and something within me stirs. There’s
something oddly familiar about him. And beyond this recognition is
another feeling. He approaches me slowly. ‘Good morning, Mikey. I’d
ask if you slept well, but I remember how painful the change
is.’
    I pull the sheet up to my neck,
say nothing.
    He smiles wistfully and shakes
his head. ‘What? Don’t recognize me? No, guess not... I was a bit
different the last time you saw me. Well, guess that means we need
to be reintroduced. Down here, they call me Athame, but the name my
parents gave me was Adam.’
    I stare at him, and shake my
head in denial of his words, yet as I look into his eyes, they are
familiar to me, and part of me believes him. He kneels next to me,
lifting a delicate yet powerful hand to cup my face. Alien thoughts
spark inside me again. ‘I know you don’t understand any of this. I
know that this must come as a huge shock to you. It was a shock to
me as well. But let me tell you, it is better this way. I couldn’t
save Ricky from killing himself, but I could save you.’
    ‘Wha...what about Jamie...and
the others?’ I swallow, trying to ease the scratchiness of my
throat, a bit taken aback by how different my voice sounds now.
    Adam - Athame - merely
chuckles. ‘Oh, we had them undergo the change as well. Only Jamie
survived.’ Athame laughs again, this time a sound of dark
amusement. ‘He will find that he’s not the top predator
anymore.’
    ‘Adam, what the hell is going
on? How has this happened to me? How long have I been here? Have
you starved me? But my eyes...?’
    Athame puts a finger to his
lips to silence me. ‘This is your beginning. All that you knew,
that you were, you’ve left behind. All the old limitations of human
form are meaningless now. You are Wraeththu. You are har.’
    They are just words. I