Regenerate

Chapter 1

Whoever said women are the weaker sex failed to consider how quick a man drops to ground when you kick him in the crotch.

The groin kick shuts my assailant up pretty quickly, but it makes his friend mad. He grabs my arm, as if I hadn’t just made it clear enough that I don’t appreciate grabby guys.

I twist my body around and smack him across the jaw before twisting my arm out of his grasp. The guy grabs onto my shoulders and pushes me up against a wall. I bring my knee up to his groin, and smile as he doubles over in pain.

The first guy grabs ahold of my arm again, and before I can twist out, yanks me down to the ground. He sits on top of my hips and pulls out a knife.

I turn my head to the side, trying to see if there’s anything in reach. There’s a half empty beer bottle, which I grab and shatter across the guys head. It’s enough to knock him out.

I push the dead weight of his limp body off of me, but before I can stand up, the other guy is on top of me. He grabs the knife before I can get to it and stabs me right in the heart. Rude.

He backs away quickly, cursing under his breath. I play dead, which is pretty easy, given the circumstance.

The guy grabs his unconscious friend and gets out of the alleyway as quick as possible. When they’re gone, I sit up slowly and double check to see if anyone is around.

I don't see anyone, so I yank the knife out of my chest. While my body mends itself, I look down at my shirt, all covered in blood. I’m going to have to get a change of clothes somewhere. And try to take a shower, since I now smell like beer.

Usually I stay out of alleyways all together. Too many pervs like the guys who just attacked me run around backstreets. Sometimes I need to do a little dumpster diving, though, and I'd seen a girl throw out a pair of tennis shoes that were in better shape than my current ones.

There’s a gym a few blocks down that I walk over to. I get a few strange looks. It's more attention than I like to attract, but nobody calls the police or anything.

When I get to the gym, I peer in through the window to see who’s working the front desk. It’s some muscley guy who’s checking out a girl on a treadmill.

A girl walks out of the gym and nearly runs into me because she’s talking on the phone.

“Hi, this is Stacy Hanson calling you back about the fundraiser next month.” The girl’s voice is high pitched and annoying, but she’s just given me the full name of a paying gym member.

I guess today I’m going to be Stacy Hanson.

I walk into the gym and prance up to the desk where Muscles is working. I try to imitate Stacy’s voice. “Hey, uh, I forgot my card. Can I have you check me in manually?”

He stares at my blood soaked shirt.

Giving him a big grin I say, “I’m running this zombie themed marathon next week. Like my costume?”

“It looks really real,” he says. “So what was your name?”

“Hanson, Stacy.”

Muscles types into the computer. “You’re good to go.”

“Thanks!” I say, and hurry off. I head straight to the locker room, strip down, and jump in one of the showers.

The warm water feels good. I wish I could shower more often, but that’s one of the downsides of being homeless. Actually pretty much everything is a downside except for not having to live with a foster family. That’s good.

Not being a government lab rat is good too, and I’m pretty sure that’s what would happen if word got out about me.

Once I dry off from the shower, I steal the clothes out of some poor girl’s locker. I need them more than she does. I throw away the shirt that’s covered in blood and beer.

My jeans are salvageable, so I fold them up and toss them in the gym bag I also stole from the girl.

I hurry out of the gym before she can come back and wonder who took her clothes. It's getting late now. I wander, like I do most nights. That's the routine I've been in for the past five years, ever since I ran away from my foster family at the age of 13.

During the day I'll go a library or beach or laundromat, some safe public place. I'll hang out and act like I belong there. Most days I'll take a nap for an hour or so.

I don't need sleep, or at least not very much of it. I can stay awake for a full week without feeling tired. After that I'll function fine, but being tired makes me grumpy. An hour or so a day seems good for me.

At night I wander. It's best to be awake and to keep on my guard. Otherwise pervs like the ones from earlier think it's okay to sneak up on you. They use night as a cover.

There's no further excitement tonight, which I'm fine with. A lot of drunk clubbers, but that's normal.

Nobody notices me. It's how I live my life.

I've been stabbed in the heart before. I've also been shot at point blank. Twice. I'm fine, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

When I was five, I fell from a window on the fifth story of the window. Nobody saw, but I got up and walked back inside. The foster family didn't believe when I said I'd fallen, but I guess five-year-olds lie about stuff like that all the time.

I feel pain, but only for a minute. My body patches itself together almost instantly, unless there's something obstructing tissue regrowth. Like earlier when I was stabbed, I couldn't heal up until the knife was removed.

The second time I was shot, I couldn't remove the bullet for an hour. I still healed up almost the moment I removed it. Hurt like hell until I got it out though. Actually, since then I've been sort of immune to pain. Like I said, I don't feel it long, or even that often. But sitting with a bullet lodged in my caranium for an hour, pretending to be dead because the moron who shot me was still there, made me pretty good at ignoring pain.

And no, I don't know why my body can regenerate like that. I assume it's some genetic fluke. Maybe I'm some crossbreed of a human and one of those lizards that can regrow it's own tail. I don't really know.

Half human, half lizard. Full-blooded freak.

Which isn't to say it doesn't have its advantages. Like it sort of comes in handy when somebody stabs you in the heart.