SWNOVELS Chapter 20.
20. For thro’ the slender cloth he sees,
Seeing through the sheer veil…
At nearly the same time as Dolores Ortiz was experimenting with her unusual transformation, a group of kids in Brownsville, Texas found a fun game to play with a classmate who they despised. Jealousy grew within their hearts and was encouraged by one of their parents. They found this boy’s social security number and began to call 911…
“My name is…and my social security number is…and when I grow up…” and these innocent young kids would make threats against the executive branch of the United States of America for the boy they were jealous of…but only when this boy was grown up without regard to the consequences of calling from a payphone or that this boy may have wanted to be a Toy’s R Us kid…began the deed to frame an innocent neighbor. They found it funny because their parents were police officers. And their mom worked as a dispatcher but after her most recent pregnancy she didn’t go back to work and fell into a bottle of wine, then a box of wine, then vodka, and whiskey Sours when her hubby got home.
Dolores Ortiz had consumed the Zed Death Berry some days ago. And today she transformed into something smaller than a human-sized Flying Fox and more like a bat or a Kamazotz but not the same. She is still green and begins to have a calling to the Mapimi Kamazotz Sanctuary that is part of the Zona de Silencio. She begins to hear Squirrel Girl’s thoughts but not the thoughts of the Chupacabra. Like Zombianity, Dolores is unaffected by the field created by the unshielded Gravity Generators. The unshielded Gravity Generators create a field that interferes with human brain waves.
She has no outward signs that she ate any amount of Zed Death Berries. Dolores’ mind is not part of the Zed shared consciousness. Since her transformation, Dolores has had hunger pangs for blood, animal but human is the best. She came upon some biological information that Milk i.e., lactose has the same or very similar compounds as glucose or Blood Sugar and this is what satiates her vampiric hunger. Cow’s milk…since the mammary glands produce milk that they process from the mother’s blood. It made the most logical sense to try a glass of milk instead of blood.
Unlike Squirrel Girl who drove her Dodge Van into Mexico, Dolores Ortiz thought she should fly and take a knapsack of clothing. But there was one strange occurrence that happened with each of her transformations. Rain…Rain followed her like an umbrella’s shadow or parasol’s shadow when someone places the shaft on their shoulder. Just that much behind her that she didn’t get wet except for her little claws on her little bat feet.
Dolores being a realist thought bringing along a messenger bag with credit cards, identification, and clothing might be a good idea as she might be able to fly through the ZPZ’s border but this flight might become tiresome somewhere in Texas.
Dolores landed and transformed near highway Thirty-Six somewhere outside of Temple, Texas. She put on the clothing in her messenger bag and began to walk along highway Thirty-Six to the southeast into Temple. And if I say she hitchhiked part of the way, would I be encouraging my audience to commit the dangerous crime of asking a stranger for a ride in their automobile? She found a Dillard’s, bought some clothes and walked to a BMW dealer to purchase a car to drive into Mexico. Dolores has an attention to detail and some time to spare. Purchasing a BMW X2 and having it outfitted for off-roading might take a week but this was better than having to rely on her bat form to fly into the Mapimi Chupacabra Sanctuary.
She found a Best Western after buying the BMW and dropping it off at a local fabrication shop that was recommended by the salesman and mechanics at the BMW dealership. Dolores dumped out the contents of her messenger bag so that she could organize her passport, California Driver’s license, debit cards, credit cards, and other financial information…she had always used the Auto Club to insure her car. She found her cellphone among the contents of her messenger bag and the products from Dillard’s she had shoved into her messenger bag. She called the insurance agent with the information about her purchase to add this to her auto insurance policy.
No one had anything to say about her green skin…well that’s not true, someone assumed she was a Zed and offered her a tub of ice water to soak her feet.
“Zeds don’t have green skin…the Chlorophyll added with the Melanin gives them a brownish golden color depending on the color of their skin naturally…” she said as she began to pull her sunglasses down. “This same Chlorophyll changes their eye color to an emerald green.”
“Your eyes are blue…” the man said as he set the ice water foot bath down near her feet and he walked away. Under his breath she heard him say something about the Chupacabra that had plagued them some months ago… “Chupacabras are back…green-skinned lady ain’t a Zombie…” Dolores heard him say something like that before the BMW salesman slapped him on the back of the head. Admonishing him for his rudeness and that the Chupacabra problem had been taken care of some months ago.