Gertrude can be a monster. Even before her transformation, she was known to be cruel and uncompromising. Nowadays, she is avoiding human contact because when she limits contact, she avoids the transformation into her worst self.
People bring out the worst in her. The nice ones are the worst, they make her feel guilty for having different instincts than theirs that made them give change to the homeless, or offer a ride to a stranger. And nowadays, her anger makes her grow over a foot taller than her actual height of just under five feet, she gets growths all over that are like oozing boils, and her skin turns green.
The transformation is extremely painful. She can feel whatever it is that causes the transformation seeping from her joints like a hot liquid, and then that hot feeling travels through her limbs and to her head. She can feel her bones elongate, her skin stretch to avoid being ripped. She can feel her mind frenzy, like a cramped blender turned on, and she feels a fury of emotions with the predominant one being rage.
Gertrude wants to go home. She wants her old office back at the apartment complex, her own recliner in her living room in her house. She wants to cook her own food on her own stove. She is determined to make it back to the life she had.
It is a long journey on foot, from upstate North Carolina where she had been freed from the laboratory of a crazy man, to the town that she had called home in the central Piedmont, but she’s been walking for over a year and she has made good time. She’s managed to avoid killing any people. She steals food, but only to sustain herself until she is home.
Which should be happening about, now. She just crossed into her town and she smiles at the sign welcoming her.
She walks to the street where she lives and she sighs audibly when she stands at her front door. She pushes inside and almost collapses in tears on the floor.
Then the ground shakes so violently that Gertrude yells and her transformation takes over her.
Just two streets over, the Red Father is getting ready for battle, only, there is one challenger that he did not anticipate.
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