Evolutionary Mutants

Only the Beginning

My back hurts. It really hurts.

Not like my-back-pack-is-too-heavy-and-I'm-sore, kind of hurt. It's more like something-is-forcing-its-way-through-skin-and-breaking-my-spine-along-the-way painful.  I whimper, trying to wake up. It's as if I'm in a drug induced coma, unable to make myself move, unable wake myself up. Tears leak out of my clenched eyelids, and I unconsciously chew my lip. The closer I get to waking up, the more intense the pain. But it's changed. It's no longer a ripping sensation. Instead it's a heavy weight, like there are hooks in my skin, dragging an indescribable weight. It hurts and feels terribly unnatural.

Another whine leaves my throat, and I finally rolling from my stomach and onto my side, panting from the roll of agony that had accompanied that movement.

What is going on? Am I dying? I think I'm dying. I kick at the blankets tangled around my legs, feeling like I'm boiling within my own skin. Too hot, too hot.

The blankets fall off my bed, but there's still a weight covering my body, dragging at my back. Forcing my eyes open, I attempt to sit up, to find out what is causing my suffering, but as soon as I try to, pain shoots through my body, and I cry out, something behind me moving and lashing out. I flail, falling onto the floor, the heavy thing still pulling at me.

I look behind me, wondering if  I have a rash or something that could be causing the pain. Instead, sprouting from my back and through my camisole I see....I see....

"MOM!!!"  I yell for her, freaking out,  heart beating a mile a minute, eyes wide with horror. And fear. And...And...

A moment later I hear another scream, from my mom, hers nearly as panicked as mine. She wails long and high pitched, then screams my name, and my twin brother's.

"Arianna! Adrian!" 

But I'm not listening. No, I'm staring at the large, feathery wings that have somehow appeared on my back, causing the painful tugging.

Is this a dream?! It has to be. There is no way in hell I could possibly have wings. It's anatomically impossible!  Right?

But it can't be a dream. Dreams don't hurt this much. At least not any that I've ever had. But people don't just grow wings! Ever.

And I can't do anything but stare at them (wouldn't you?) They're long, stretched out and curving around my room, making it cramped and leaving no space. They're both about three times my height, making them about 16 feet long. Each. Wingspan of about 32 feet.

The feathers range from inky black to varying shades of grey. They're mostly all black, but the occasional splash of grey on the down feathers beneath the longer black ones, make it interesting,  and hard to look away from. It'd be amazingly beautiful if they weren't so heavy. So heavy it feels like their ripping right out of my body. That's why it hurt so bad.

The pain is slowly dissipating, but the place where they connect to my back aches, though it's a relief to the intense agony it had been.

Rising slowly and unsteadily,  I make it too my feet, the wings shifting with me. Now that I begin to pay attention to them, I can feel the wings, like they are just any other normal limb of mine. They move with me, sending information to my brain about my surroundings, they're sensitive and unaccustomed to the small confines of my room. Carefully, I flex them to see if they would respond. They do. I'm probably in shock or something, because all I can think about doing is just testing them out, not flipping out, like I can year my mom doing. I bring them in closer to my body, accidentally knocking a water bottle off my desk.