One Night as the Queen

When did it start? Dunno. I supposed a long time ago. Maybe way back in school?

On the high or low borders of my vision, I'd experienced bright flashes. Instantly there and gone, and I would wonder if I had imagined it. The years rolled by and they became more frequent.

By then, I hadn't given it a thought. I ignored stuff like that. There was no pain or impairment, and nobody ever mentioned anything odd about me. Maybe they ignored me too if I was a regular oddball to them?

...Never thought I was odd. I looked funny, but what giant didn't?

The flashes would just come and go. These were not everyday occurrences. Maybe monthly? Weekly?

That was what happened when I considered my illness normal. In fact, I didn't know I was sick.

Since I was a kid, I was dying and no one ever realized it -- and I included myself in that lot.

How had I found out? By accident.

I was a really tall guy! Nearly seven foot with a weight close to three hundred, I was a genuine giant. But I was tall, not big. That triple-digit weight sounded heavy, but pack that weight vertically and the pudge doesn't stand out nearly as much as it would've on someone normal sized.

Anyways, I'd worked on machinery. I sometimes have to fit in tight spaces to stretch and flatten myself for certain out-of-reach parts. A very tight and uncomfortable squeeze.

Every day, I'd leave with lined impressions in my skin from how hard I was laying or wedging myself into steely cases, pulling densely plated gears or wheels until they turned, gripping pistons and plungers before they moved again, and all manner of other machinery I was tasked to perform maintenance on.

One day, I nearly got my head crushed because some asshole machine operator thought he'd come in early and run the damn hardline. All it took was for him to use a pair of snips and cut off my lockout tag.

He hit the big red E-stop button when I screamed.

That day was a curse and blessing.

On the one hand, a very happy lawyer handed me a very nice paycheck, and an awesome disability was electronically deposited in my account on a bi-weekly basis.

On the other hand... what other hand? I only have one now and that makes my living difficult.

But that's getting ahead when I should've focused on what was wrong with my head.

Back then, I had other injuries that required looking at. Other than the ground meat hanging off my wrist, I was evaluated on how severe the rest of my booboos were. So one of the tests the doctors conducted was on priority number one: my head.

They honestly reminded me of modern art images, but they were of the inside of my head! I had to wonder if stuff like that could make a quick buck?

On another note, apparently there had been something steadily growing over the years in the back of my thick skull. And it was also apparent that the mass was inside of something very squishy and delicate. Someplace I never wanted anybody to be touching.

When I saw it, I heard an imaginary Arnold Schwarzenegger tell me his famous line from Kindergarten Cop: ”It's not a Toomah!” Wishful thinking... instead, I had a few doctors and specialists explain the prognosis to me and what they could do about it.

So how long did I have left to live? That made me laugh because no one had any fucking idea. They gave me a range, but the width of that scope was fluctuating down around a year or up to double my age... incredible guesses.

Nowadays, I tried to enjoy life however I could, but without a whole lot of wandering around due to my driving privileges being revoked. On the one hand, my driving had become impaired. On the other, now being aware that I could clonk out at any moment while on the road scared the shit out of me. Even if it was by accident, I didn't want to be responsible for ruining someone's life.

No more driving for me.

Unless someone was right underneath me if I fell, walking was simple and safe. So I did a lot more of that.

Now onto something that was a bit odd for most folk. Back when I was a whole man, I was interested in visiting conventions and doing costume roleplay. These costumes weren't something I could purchase from a store or order online. They were handmade.

Crafting the costumes I wore was a way to show off my enjoyable work. My size caused a variety of characters to really stand out.

But I only won a trophy on one costume.

Conventions weren't going to be a possibility for me. At least, not anymore as they distanced themselves from my location. Could anyone imagine lugging around my monstrously great costumes to those centers?

That meant I should do something with my costumes. Selling them would be a nice bet. I could earn some cash. What would I have done with the money?

Likely travel. If I couldn't do any countryside driving, then I'd go on a worldwide trip as a tourist! That'd be a grand way for me to get out of the house.

In the meantime, I had sold a good portion of my handmade costumes. I had sentimental value in a few, but not enough for me to irrationally keep and never use.

Except for my gorgeously prized possession. I had something in mind for that majestic beauty...

Halloween Day!

I stood and stared at my costume. Even in pieces, I gave each part a creative appreciation for how they would fit back together. These were graceful and stunning. A bit perverse too, but not because of anything I had done. A beautiful aesthetic, but weirdly intentional from the source material and from the original designer.

In jest, I respectfully bowed to her majesty.

It had been awhile since I'd excitedly pranced around in that thing. In the condition I was in, I had to wonder if I had what it took anymore to carry it, let alone wear it. I'd have to so single-handedly...

I couldn't. Not in complete uniform. But in parts, I'd pull off one last hurrah for the Queen.

The Queen? I'd imagine a lot of folk would be questioning me on that one. Thing was, I had in my hand the biggest and baddest Momma to ever rock the galaxy. At least, I had her crested head under my arm.

I'd have to take the head crest outside, then the bottom half of the head. The torso would come around the front of the house in three parts: shoulders with two dominant arms, the bust with secondary shorter arms, and the waist with the spine. There were four supportive rods that the bust and then torso would slip onto the waist. The spine connected the three after each segmented piece was fitted.

But I'd have to slip in first, which was easy. The hard part was lifting the pieces up over my head and carefully dropping them on. And I haven't told you about the lower half of my costume!

To quote a very famous man, John Wayne, I said to myself: “Life is tough. Even tougher when you're stupid.”

I needed help...

When I paid my friendly neighbor a visit, we had our pleasant greetings, informal gossip, and then got down to business. I showed the neighborly man what we were dealing with and he choked.

“You're gonna traumatize the kids!” I had to laugh at his observation.

“I want to give them something to remember.” And I did too. With no children of my own, I wanted some legacy to leave behind.

After awhile, we noticed the sky wasn't as brightly blue as it once was. And the shadowed outline of the mountains was creeping up on the big yellow sun.

A very infamous concept crossed my mind, but it was spoken in so many ways that there was no one way on how to say it. To be safe, we slowed down, but hurried the Hell up to get the job done.

With a little time to spare, he congratulated me on getting the suit on, but in a wary manner. “You'd never catch me in one of those. Must be heavy as the mountains and hot as Hell.”

He was right, but I had an idea how to solve those two issues.

The Queen had four arms. I had two, and only one was going to be working. That meant we could strap a pair of arms up, the dominant ones, and have them hung up. When he'd strung them up, the Queen would be in a pose that suggested she was ready to pounce on someone.

I never saw what he tied the arms up onto, but for the time being, they held.

He suggested that I sit in a chair. I wasn't sure how the suit and chair would fit together, but he pointed out that the kids wouldn't see past the doorway. So anything beyond the door would be for comfort. I still wore the leg pieces and had the tail, otherwise the spinal column wouldn't keep the full torso attached with the waist. The shoulders and bust would've rode up the rods, which could've caused damage to the four supports.

So I sat and used the back of my chair to support the long tail.

As for the couple of hours directly under the porchlight, also being a roasted nut in the suit, we had an idea. To keep a steady airflow, he connected a simple extension: a vent. He provided the vent from his garage -- a suped up dryer, I supposed -- and got the long connection laid and aimed at the back of the chair, but rigidly aligned beneath the tail. My tail directly pointed the vent away from the front door to the kitchen window behind me.

No need for air conditioning; the Autumn breeze would be pleasantly cool enough for my sorry ass.

Now the problem with those two improvisations was I would require my neighbor's help again to get out. Once our neighborhood's Halloween festivities concluded, he'd agreed to come back around and get me out of my alien prison.

I had been about to let him go, but I realized I'd forgotten one of the most important props to the whole display: the bait. Why would any kid come here if there wasn't some treat?

So we had a quick debate on what to do and he offered me an awesome idea. Since my theme was an Alien Queen, he'd provide an egg. One wicker laundry basket, a bit of shiny Saran wrap, and some more of that wrap to cradle the candy; we'd produced a sweet egg!

After I told him where the candy was and he'd positioned the egg before me, he'd flick on the lights and my back was bathed in their glow. A very foreboding shadow fell over my egg.

He'd returned to his house and prepared his own fashion of trick-or-treating by turning his own porchlight on. Pretty normal.

My night was about to be far from normal...

Halloween Night!

For a little while, I was worried no one would show up.

But then, the first kids arrived.

They were considerate how they wandered up to me. These munchkins weren't toddlers, but still small compared to me. Maybe just barely teens? Anyways, they walked up my driveway and turned to keep on the stone walkway between my garden and lawn. Very considerate where they stepped.

Their eyes were on the Queen, but technically on me. Then they directed their attention to the egg. My secondary alien arms were holding the shiny top of the egg protectively, but really it was to hold the Saran wrap down.

As the group of kids inched closer, I hissed. The sound echoed inside of crested head above me.

The brave kids reached for the candy --

-- and I pushed out the secondary pair of chompers from the Queen's mouth over their heads.

A simple rod in the bottom half of the head with a handmade puppet on the end. It didn't chomp, but the appearance was menacing. All I had to do was tilt the front of the crested head down slightly for the puppet to slip out. Yarn was tied to an eyehole at the very end of the rod and kept it from falling out of the Queen's mouth.

A tilt back, and the Queen would slurp her bitey tongue back in. A sudden jarring stop told me something: the back of the crest had hit the door frame... I'd have to be careful about that.

Back to the kids.

They jumped and at least one of the kids made a break for it back to the safety of the sidewalk. I couldn't keep myself from laughing at the sight. Unfortunately for the other kids, my laughter boomed rather than be muffled inside of the suit.

They had their quick pickings of candy and ran!

The next couple of hours was a bit of the same. Only a few kids laughed back at my jumpscare. We chatted some and they went on to the next house.

I had fun.

Then something very strange and scary went through me.

My vision flashed, blinded me, and changed significantly in an instant. At that time, I was worried my condition had worsened or I'd experienced a seizure and was waking up from it.

I didn't move. The fear of what had happened was overpowered by what could be the cause. If I was about to croak, I didn't want it to be in front of kids!

As if my thoughts had summoned them, teenage kids turned to my house, but they stood on the sidewalk. They appeared confused and a little frightened?

Had they already been to my house and seen or heard something while I was out? Had I made noises while having that epileptic episode?

I watched and tried to listen, but it wasn't easy to pick up their voices from my distance across the lawn. But we all heard the screams.

All the kids turned to face the direction of the screaming, but somehow I didn't have to turn to see. Oddly enough, I could see in every direction except two: directly down and behind me.

We could hear the screaming, but not exactly see what was causing -- them? More screams, shouts, and a lot of yelling. Then came the alarmingly familiar sirens...

An incredible disorientation came over me when I tried to wave at the kids. It was like I had fumbled at catching an imaginary ball! I gave it another go and felt a sense of vertigo.

So I figured I'd actually had a seizure and maybe my brain had done something screwy with my once finely tuned motor skills. First thing was first, to test what I could do.

A simple twitch of my index finger confused me. The sense of that finger curling wasn't right. I focused on it and tried again. That time, I found out what was the problem. My attempt to curl just one finger wasn't possible. Curling one wasn't, but I could grip my fingers into a fist.

Something snapped around the doorway when I pulled my arm down to inspect it. I hadn't noticed what had broken, but I supposed that meant it wasn't something important.

My attention shifted down to my arm... arms?

The Queen's dominant and secondary arms had both come down in front of me. I had my arm slipped inside of the secondary, but the dominant one shouldn't have been capable of moving with my movements. Maybe if I had kept the rods bridged between the two, but I'd removed them since I had no need to manipulate both sets.

I reached my secondary arm up -- the one I had thought my arm was still inside -- and grabbed the dominant arm.

I felt that. The grip and grab.

My mind was buzzed with a terrible sensation as I tried moving my arms separately. Like how everything functioned was being rewritten, rewired, reprogrammed... whatever you wanna call it.

Extra limbs!? I had another pair of arms!?

That realization drove me to experiment with my maimed limb.

I could feel my fingers. My hand... make that hands. That was so weird, but I wasn't complaining about it.

With a tug, the other dominant arm snapped the binding my neighbor had put on. And then I stretched out all four arms to only see and inspect them in front of me. I turned my palms up, made fists, and swung a punch -- or two. I'd have to work on the control of four limbs rather than the movement of two arms as if they were one.

I had no idea what had happened, but I liked it.

Then I tried to sit up. Of course, the crest of the Queen's head hit the doorway... except it felt like I had hit the back of my head against a wall?

Turning a little, I felt the door's frame bite into my waist and hips. I felt that if I could wiggle, the attachments from the spine could come undone and I'd squirm my way out of the torso. But that wasn't the case for a couple of reasons.

For one, the chair was beneath me. If I kicked it out, then I'd collapse under the weight. Especially now that the dominant arms weren't -- well, I somehow had control over them. That wasn't an issue anymore!

The second problem was the vent. When I tried to wiggle, the vent felt as if it had gotten in the way. Like the chair or tail was somehow tangled around it?

...If I could move the dominant arms and feel the crest when it hit, I supposed the tail could be manipulated too? Had I become the Queen?

For now, I let that thought go and prioritized the tail. If it could move, then I could perhaps be one step closer to freedom.

I focused on my posterior. That was very damn strange, but didn't do the job I wanted. Instead, I felt my legs strain under my weight when I tried to lift my ass up.

Before, when I had wiggled, it had felt as if the attachments to my spine could come undone. I gave that a shot and felt my tail move. That was very interesting to feel, but a bit sickening too as the attachments weren't where I thought.

The tail's movement made a noise. Like I had ripped something. Then a squelched pop later, my tail flung up and I heard it smack off of the ceiling. And a crash, after the ceiling fan broke and dropped with my tail back to the floor.

The back of my chair was a ruin, but I felt like my tail's freedom had given me more wiggle room. I didn't feel as stuck to the floor anymore.

But I was stuck in the doorway. It didn't matter what way I turned my hips, pushed back against the door's frame, or pulled back in -- I was stuck.

With a heavy sigh -- which sounded real damn weird -- I gave up on getting out. I focused my attention instead on those kids once more.

While I wasn't paying attention, they'd stopped to watch me flop around in vain for freedom! I was thankful they'd stuck around, but I felt ashamed of my feeble display. If I was correct, I was an all powerful and mighty Alien Queen, but with a royal ass firmly stuck on the throne.

First thing I had done was give the kids a friendly wave -- or two. One of the group of kids bravely stepped forward and came running up to me.

He, or she, had a Jack-O-Lantern for a head, but spoke with its carved tooth mouth insync with the voice. “You okay? Did your -- ah, the costume, you know...?” Jack crossed a pair of fingers and implied a merge or some kind of transformation from that gesture.

Since I hadn't tested my voice yet, I only nodded. Who knew if I could speak, but I was frightened of what would shoot out of my mouth if I tried.

Jack told me the same thing happened to the rest of the group and apparently it wasn't an isolated occurrence. One of the kids had a cell on hand. Almost all costume goers had transformed to a degree and nearly the whole world was going bonkers.

When Jack waved the rest of his crew over, I was shown what the one kid's cell could explain. Not much, but at least we knew we weren't alone.

“Ah, yeah... anything we can get you?” Jack, and everyone else, took note of my predicament.

There was someone who could help me, but I didn't want to speak. So I pointed at my neighbor's house.

A rabbit wearing a hypnotic, swirling blend of colors hopped away to alert the neighbor of my situation. Soon enough, my neighbor had arrived and was getting the gist of what had happened from the kids -- and the cellphone helped support our claims.

The kids had made a call -- I assumed their parents -- and waited by the street to be picked up.

Meanwhile, my neighbor had gone around back to figure out how to get me out. I waited in silence before I heard him swear something fierce behind me.

When he came back, he told me about the destruction my tail had caused and the icky mess that used to be his laundry vent. My guess was the tail had smashed it and whatever I could reach had smeared over the tubular chute.

In my current scenario, I was informed the only way out would be to break the door frame. That wasn't an appealing plan. So we called and waited for authorities to arrive.

And waited... it was obvious the world was turned upside down and the emergency responders were overwhelmed with all manner of chaos tonight.

Some hours later, my neighbor showed me an interesting tidbit on his cell's headlined media. All of the transformed would revert back to normal come the morning. We just needed to keep whatever our costume had come with on. And not become pregnant.

Both of those sounded easy to me. Nothing could come off of me and I wasn't capable of becoming pregnant. Alien Queens laid parasitic eggs that did the whole impregnating shabang.

Almost all night had gone by before a response team arrived. With the new information, they recommended I rest and wait until the morning instead of breaking my house apart. That was sound advice and I had no reason not to take it.

Then the sun rose its shiny yellow face up in the sky and basked me in a welcoming warmth. Despite how happy I was to have my full arm back -- and perhaps nothing wrong with my head -- I eagerly awaited the end of my one night as the Queen.

And waited...

When the dawn had almost passed, I panicked. What if those magicians or whatever were wrong? What if a costume that had nothing to take off was by default a permanent transformation?

Then I remembered something my neighbor told me. The vent was a icky mess...

I was a Queen that laid eggs.

I had an ovipositor... which I'd broken free from when I lashed my tail around and off the egg layer.

Looked like I'd be stuck for awhile...