New TF Story

[hmmm!]

Shandra has been a part of the main cast for some time now, so I thought it appropriate to finally get a picture of her drawn. So here you go. Enjoy.

[hmmm!]

Now, here's a pic from when Katie had her unfortunate and sudden transformation at school.

[hmmm!]

So does anyone even look in here? ^_-

Have another picture. This is from when after Shandra's transformed and makes a run for Mary's apartment door. Mary puts a stop to that.

[Yeroc]

Awesome work

[Dantwz]

Hey soy, what happened to the story? Waiting eagerly for the next chapter of this excellent story. Keep it up!

[SoylentOrange]

Oh, hey.

Sorry, I just kinda back-burnered it since pretty much no one ever said anything. ^^;

I'm still working on it here and there but I'm giving more attention to other projects as of late, most of which don't get posted...

[satistaspawn]

That's a shame I do love this story, Started reading it off of Spiralstaircases DA account and just recently read up to the current page on here.

[Tinn]

Originally Posted by satistaspawn

That's a shame I do love this story, Started reading it off of Spiralstaircases DA account and just recently read up to the current page on here.

...Yeah, that's pretty much my story. Except for me not realising SpiralingStaircase wasn't the author. Sorry about that. Now that I know the truth, I can say, "Nice. This story really is quite good."

I have been enjoying Mary's recent panic - which is to say, I've been enjoying how well it's written, not her ongoing emotional distress. I think Katie really is a rock to Mary. Without her, she rapidly goes to pieces (in every sense), but when she's around even her presence seems to be calming.

In contrast, Shandra seems... ehm, traumatised, most likely. Hopefully she'll be able to manage to take "Physician, heal thyself" literally enough to pull through it. She has managed to cope pretty well so far, all things considered, but maybe that's just shock.

[SoylentOrange]

"Mary," Katie said, poking the green-skinned tentacle-monster in the stomach. "Mary, wake up. Mary..."
"Wha, hua, what is it?" Mary asked, starting awake and rubbing her eyes with a tentacle. She realized what she was doing and formed the appendage back into a hand.
"We're in trouble," Katie said, stepping back.
"Trouble?" Mary scoffed, sitting up on the squared-off mat of tentacles that served as her bed. "We passed trouble a long time ago." Mary looked down, firming up her legs into a more humanoid shape before standing up. She'd used her toga to make a kind of bedspread, and once again wound it around herself, noting with dismay a few patches that had been eaten through.
"Dammit, you guys!" She said, turning and yelling at the tentacle-bed. "I said no eating the sheets!" In response the mat seemed to compress in on itself, shrinking away from Mary's rebuke.
"...I thought all that stuff was you?" Katie said, cocking her head.
"Yeah, well, I'm being run by committe, remember," Mary said, pointing to her head with an irritated gesture. "Apparently not everyone's on board with the 'don't eat what's left of the furniture' thing."
"Well, we got bigger problems now," Katie said, backing up towards her room.
"Greeeat," Mary said, rubing her eyes with one hand while the other held the knot of her toga. She followed Katie into her room, stopping suddenly when she saw Shandra sitting against the remaining wall of Katie's bedroom. Shandra flinched away as Mary scowled at her, but before things could escalate, Katie's snapping fngers re-focused Mary's attention on her computer screen.
"Your little performance yester-"
"Oh, that's just fan*tas*tic," Mary interrupted as she read the headline on Katie's screen. 'Strange animal confronts police', it said.
"That's not the half of it," Katie said, clicking on the link.

Mary's jaw set as the local anchor's 'serious' voice told the story about a missing persons investigation gone awry, but what made her eyes pop was when she said that a local reporter had recovered a video from an abandoned police cruiser. Mary covered her eyes with her hands as she saw her spiked, hulking form in the grainy dashboard footage, but a new pair of eyes formed on the backs of her hands to continue watching. She heard the sharp retort of the rifle and saw her fall to earth, bouncing on the pavement and laying still for just a few moments, long enough for Mary to distractedly wonder why a form supposedly meant for fighting had such large breasts before she stirred again. Mary watched her recorded version rise up, her face already reconstituting itself as she growled. Then she leapt, and with a great crash and roar the video cut out.
"Now remember," the anchorwoman said, "authorites have confirmed the footage is genuine, but are saying that it is an ongoing investigation and refuse to comment further. However, Channel Eight news has determined that all of the aprtments on the Yorkshire Terrace apartment complexes have been evacuated, and traffic up and down 73rd street is being regulated by officials. Also, the jornalist who recovered the tape from the damaged police car snapped this photo of a crud message carved into the hood of the car," She continued, a photograph of Mary's "CDC" scrawled into front of the caved-in police car appearing on-screen, "Although its meaning or signifigance is not immediately clear. We'll have more on this breaking story as it develops."

"Greeeeat," Mary said, looking up at the ceiling. She turned away from the computer, putting a hand to her head. So what now? Escalation? Could Mary expect to see the national guard on her door by nightfall? Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard Shandra's voice, no more than a whisper, but when half the room was basically one huge sensory organ it was impossible for her to *not* hear.
"K-Katie...?" Shandra whispered, trying to get her attention. "KAtie?"
"What?" Mary asked, turning. Shandra flinched away, curling in as much as her huge stomach allowed. She was still producing new tentacles, each spawn slithering out from the improvised "skirt" she'd made from her lab coat and joining the rest of the mat that covered most of the floor.
"Well, what?" Mary asked, putting her free hand on her hip.
"Nothing!" Shandra said, curling in even tighter.
"Oh, don't give me that," Mary said, losing patience. "What were you going to ask her?"
"I- I'm thirsty," Shandra said, still looking away. "I- I just wanted- can I please have some water?"
"Well what do you need to ask for?" Mary said. "Just go get some from- er..." Mary trailed off as she remembered that in her frenzy the day before she'd eaten the sink and the cupboards and everything inside them. Shandra said nothing, but snuck a glance at Mary. "...Hmmm," Mary said, turning and looking out the bedroom door. "uh..."
"I'm kinda thirsty, too," Katie said, turning in her chair to face Mary. "and I'm not waiting to boobzilla out just to get a drink, that's for sure."
"Hmm..." Mary thought. "Well, I mean, I can't have eaten all the way back to the pumping station. I bet there's a tap-water pipe we can get clean water out of somewhere."

"Just a sec," Mary said to Katie and Shandra, walking back into where her kitchen used to be. She closed her eyes and "felt" around, letting the sensations of the living floor come into focus. She could feel the rough, pebbly surface of the concrete foundation, everything down to the carpet having been stripped away and consumed already. She felt a few cold pieces of metal, but it was the cold, wet sensation of water that finally tipped her off. Opening her eyes, Mary turned to the source of the.water, kneeling down and waving the tentacles away with her hand. As they parted, the seal over the sink pipe released and water began flowing up and out of it once more. Mary immediately noticed the tentacles nearest the pipe began swelling and fattening, just like she had when she'd gotten caught in the rain and when she'd gone swimming. Mary bent down and held her lips just above where the water was coming out and took a drink. She could taste that the water was clean- not pure, but clean enough to be healthy to normal humans- but the action offended her. Bending down like a dog to drink from a broken pipe... she was still civilized, even if she was a monster.

Mary extruded a long tentacle from her arm, wrapping one end around the broken pipe and hollowing it into a tube so the water would flow through. After a short mental command for the tentacle to not "drink" the water that was flowing through it, water began dribbling out of the end of the hollow tentacle.
"Well, it's a start," Mary said to herself as she stood, "But it still looks like I'm drinking out of a booger."
Concentrating on the hollow tentacle, Mary stiffened its outsides somewhat, then darkened the color. Finally, she gave the tentacle a glossy scaled pattern, and with that the tentacle's transformation into a reasonable fascimilie of a garden hose was complete.
"Not Perrier, but a little civilized, at least," Mary said, turning toward the bedroom. "Hey, I found the water!" She called out.
"Is it good to drink?" Katie called back.
"Yeah!" Mary replied, folding the 'hose' at arm's length so the water didn't splash on her toga.
Katie came out first, followed cautiously by shandra. Mary held the hose out to Katie, who took it, and after a moment, turned to Shandra and held it out to her. Shandra looked at Mary nervously, clutching her hands as close to her chest as her enormous stomach and engorged breasts allowed. When Mary turned away, Shandra cautiously approached Katie and took the hose from her.
"Th-thank you," She whispered to Katie, as she brought the hose to her mouth.

Shandra took a few sips without event, but the instant her lips touched the end of the hose it spasmed, darting into her mouth. Shandra reeled back, her eyes going wide, but her head snapped forwards as she reached the end of the hose's length, apparently unable to let go of the hose.
"Mmmph! Mmmm!" She wordlessly screamed as she tried to pull the hose out of her mouth, cheeks buldging with water. She pulled, but it only served to pull her face forward, her brow furrowing in doscomfort. Like some sort of lamprey or barbed tooth, the hose had somehow attached itself to the inside of shandra's mouth.
"Mary!" Katie yelled.
"What?!" Mary shot back, spreading her arms wide. "It's not me!"
"Well, help me get it off!" Katie said, grabbing the tentacle hose and yanking on it. Shandra let out another muffled cry as she was dragged face-first around the kitchen.
"Okay, okay, stop! We're hurting her!" Katie said as she dropped the hose, Shandra waving frantically. The three stopped to take stock of the situations, all that could be heard being the running of the water and Shandra's frantic, rhythmic swallowing.
"Uh, oh..." Mary said, looking down at Shandra's front. Katie and Shandra followed her gaze as handra's already gravid belly seemed to pulsate farther out in front of her with every swallow. The creaking of her pink scrubs indicated that her breasts were following suit, taking up more and more room on the shelf of her swollen abdomen. Shandra looked back up at Mary and Katie with terror in her eyes, and set about trying to kink or bend the tentacle-hose so as to restrict the flow of water. Katie turned to the source of the water, but the tentacle hose was bonded tightly to the pipe. Katie tried shaking the pipe loose, but it was cast right into the foundation- without some sort of tool she'd have no hope of hampering the water's source.
"What? What're you doing?" Mary said, grabbing her head in her hands. "Let her go!"
"Why do you fear?" The Body asked. "We are merely preparing this meat to go long periods without sustenance."
Mary looked at Shandra, frantically struggling as her enormous stomach hung down close to her knees and her breasts threatened to rip the pink scrubs in two. "She's good! She's fine! Knock it off already!"
"This meat exists only to help give birth to the Flesh," the Body said. "We do not need to worry about her defending herself from predators while she remains in the lair."
"So?!"
"So the only thing this meat needs is plenty of sustenance."
"You're going to pop her! She can't get much bigger."
"Nonsense. The Flesh is strong and durable, our glory can take many forms."
Mary looked at Shandra, trying now just to hold herself on her feet as she grew more and more gravid by the second.
"I. Said. STOP!" Mary finally yelled, raising a hand into the air, her fingers lengthening into scythe-like talons as she brought her hand down on the taut hose, severing it cleanly. Shandra stumbled back a step before falling down on her butt against the wall, the mountain of flesh attached to her front nearly completely obscuring her.
"Puh-pleh!" Shandra said, spitting out the tentacle, having finally disengaed it from her mouth as she sat there panting.

Mary and Katie stared at Shandra in shock, her grotesque exaggeration of a figure sloshing and jiggling as she panted. She wa a veritable wall of feminine curves, solid (if pliable) flesh fron her knees to her chin, her breasts actually pressing in against her cheeks as it heaved with each pant, the green flesh billowing up out of the neck of her scrubs, thrust skyward even moreso by the buldge of the enormous abdomen that dominated her silhouette.
"Lord almighty, Mary..." Katie said, shaking her head with a hand to her mouth.
"I said it wasn't me!" Mary exlaimed, still agape at Shandra's size. She had grown bigger before, when she was first transformed, but still, to see the giant mounds of jiggly flesh stacked on top of Shandra's lap like overfilled water balloons was still a sight.
"Well, fix it anyways!" Katie said, gesturing to Shandra with both arms.
"Well- I- how?!" Mary retored.
"I don't know, you put it in her, take it out!"
Mary looked incredulously as her friend and back to Shandra. What, just poke a hole in her and let it drain? She thought sardonically. Well, she thought, looking at Shandra struggling under her own weight, at the very least she could make her comfortable. Mary pulled up the tentacle-floor beneath Shandra, which caused her to start, but she was pressed down into the bowl of the floor as it rose and shaped, turning into what was essentially a living papasan chair, supporting Shandra's head and legs while still allowing space for her enormous breasts and stomach to sit comfortably.
"What, you're redecorating?" Katie asked.
"Look, she got this way because I was trying to 'help' in the first place. The less I get- the less the *body* gets involved- the better."
Katie looked at Shandra, who had thankfully moved past panting and was now moaning like an over-stuffed Thanksgiving diner, running her hands over what parts of her engorged stomach she could reach.
"...You think so?" Katie asked, looking back to Mary.
Mary shook her head slightly. "*You* wanna risk it?"
Katie grimmaced, then approached the little seat, looking down at Shandra. "Mary," She asked, brushing her hand over Shandra's forehead, "You can turn into just about anything, right?"
Mary cocked her head, looking at her friend. "...I think so," she said, "why?"
"Could you turn into a guy?" Katie asked, looking at her friend.
"Do what?" Mary retorted, flinching as though she'd been struck. "I mean, what?"
"I've been... pretty understanding, I think," She said, taking a step towards Mary, "But I think if I keep this bottled up anymore it's gonna split me in half."
"What? What's bottled?" Mary asked, taking a step back.
"Anger," Katie said, "Anger at this whole rotten situation! Anger at being turned into boobzilla, anger at that dead repairman, the two dead cops, anger that you've been basically hijaced at the cellular level and I can't even really hate it because it's *you*!"
Mary shook her head and put her hands up as she backed up another step. "And- And so you want to...?"
Katie looked Mary straight in the eyes and squared her jaw. "I want to hit the Body. Just once. *Hard*."
"Katie, it's not- I mean, there isn't-"
"I *know*, which is why I asked if you could turn into a guy. Turn into him. It. Whatever." Katie looked to the side, scowling. "I want to vent my frustration at something that doesn't have your face, okay?"
Mary's brow furrowed. The request was bizarre, but it was a bizzarre circumstance, and if this was what Katie needed to keep sane in such an insane situation...
"So... what, just any guy?" Mary asked.
"I dunno- Just, what the hell does the Body look like?"
Mary actually laughed a bit. "It doesn't look like anything, KAtie. I mean, that first night, when it did whatever it did to me, it was like this light green light that went on forever, and it was just this voice talking to me. It's not a guy; it's not even a person. It's just... it."
"Well, okay," Katie said, putting her hands up. "How about this; make it look as little like you as possible, okay? Like I said, I don't wanna see your face when I do this."
"Okay, okay," Mary said, turning away from Katie. She'd turned into lots of things so far, but they were all female at least, sometimes embarrassingly so. Even the alien shapes of the mermaid-like swimming creature and the scythe-taloned sprinter didn't seem as strange to her as trying to be a man.
"Um... you mind turning around?" Mary asked, blushing.
"You're gonna take off your toga?" Katie asked back, her expression twisting.
"No, no!" Mary replied, eyes popping wide. "I just... this is really weird, you know?"
"The whole reason I'm asking for this is because I've been swimming in wierd all week," Katie retorted as she turned. "You'll have to excuse me for not differentiating between the flavors."
Mary smiled, but she was more concerned with the canvas she was staring at, the familiar shapes and colors needing to be redrawn. "Hoo-kay," She said, exhaling. Let's take away before we add, she thought to herself. Closing her eyes, she began willing away all the things that she consedered feminine about herself, drawing in her hips, shortening her hair, flattening her breasts to nearly nothing, the sensations odd and disquieting. It was only a few moments and Mary had reduced herself to something that could hardly be discerned as a man or a woman at first glance.
"Ready?" Katie asked.
"No, I'm done taking away," Mary replied, "Now I have to... add."
Katie snorted. "I almost wanna watch."
"Katie, gross," Mary grimmaced as she willed her shoulders a little wider, fingers a little thicker, jaw a little squared off.
"Look, I'll take all the laughs I can get, okay?" Katie said, cracking her knuckles.
"All right, okay," Mary said, flattening her nose, changing her hair and eye color, and giving herself a few inches of height just for the heck of it. "Okay," Mary said, buldging her muscles just a bit all over, "I think I'm done."

Katie turned, recoiling a bit at the different person standing in front of her before her face scrunched up in rage and she belted Mary right across the jaw. It was the speed that caught her off guard the most, the blow delivered so quickly and with such force Mary didn't even have the time to tense up. Mary spun around, tossed off her balance as her feet tangled aound each other. She landed on her stomach, catching her face before it slammed into the ground, and even as she hit she felt the Body react with anger and fear.
"The Meat attacks us?! Why does it do this thing?!"
"Stop, stop!" Mary yelled inside her head. "She didn't mean anything by it!"
"It attacked! The meat attacked us!" The Body retorted, trying to slip into the muscular "defensive" form Mary had been turned into before.
"It wasn't realy!" Mary insisted, trying to keep the muscles down. "She- it was practice! PRactie against, others, other, uh, prey!"
"Prey?" The Body said, stopping. MAry let out her breath and forced herself normal again, or at least as normal as she got.
"Yes..." The Body said, Mary sensing something akin to pride in its voice. "Yes, the Meat that serves the Flesh may not always be within the lair," it said. "It should know how to defend itself from predators. This pleases us."
MAry exhaled as she rose to her feet again. Another bullet dodged, another bomb defused...
"Another day in paradise," Mary muttered as she stood, shaking her head as she regarded her friend. "Feel better?" She asked, ruvbbing her jaw.
"...yeah, actually," Katie repied, her features softening. "Sorry, did it hurt?"
Mary chuckled and shook her head. "Nah. Pretty surprising, though, where'd you learn to punch that fast?"
"I couldn't tell you," Katie said. "It just came so quick, all the stuff I've been bottling up just shooting into my fist."
"Well, believe me, no one wants it gone more than me," Mary said.
Katie nodded, smiling slightly. "You know, for a split second I was thinking maybe I'd kick you right in the dangly bits."
Mary laughed at that one, putting a hand to her mouth and wincing. "WOuldn't've done any good, I'm afraid," Mary said, "Nothing down there."
"Back when you were a guy?" Katie asked, eyes widening slightly.
"I'll change the wallpaper all you want," Mary said, putting a hand up, "But no way am I re-doing the plumbing. Even I've got my limits."
Katie blushed and turned to the side, putting a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. "Okay, okay. So now that we've got that little detour settled, what do we do about her?" She asked, pointing with her thumb to the tentacle-recliner and the gravid form atop it. Mary watched as another long tentacle slid out of Shandra's skirt, falling off the makeshift recliner and absorbing into the floor.
Mary walked up next to Shandra, who was still moaning and slowly rubbing the sides of her stomach, as much of it as she could reach around the sides of her drastically swollen breasts.
"Geeze, she's almost as big as me when I go all boobzilla," Katie said.
Mary shook her head again. "I really don't think there's anything for us to do," she said. "Just let her process it all."
"You think you could give her one of your shots? Like you do to me?" Katie asked.
"No," Mary answered, shaking her head. "Not like this. You remember how short it lasted when you were full of milk, right? If I did it to her now, like this, I doubt it'd last an hour."
"So just leave her?"
"You got any better ideas?"
Katie put her hands on her hips, biting her lower lip as she slowly shook her head. "Just hate to see her like this," She said.
"I know," Mary nodded, "Me too."
For a little while the pair of friends stood in silence, looking at the horrendously-bloated nurse in her strange, fleshy chair.

[SoylentOrange]

So, my first ever TG. It wasn't even really planned, Katie's off-hand comment about wanting to nut the Body a few chapters back coming to fruition. ^^;

[SoylentOrange]

Katie suddenly spun to Mary, grabbing her by the arm. "The phone!" She exclaimed.
"Phone?" Mary echoed, "What phone? Where?"
"In the bushes!" Katie said, heading for the front of the apartment. That cop gave it to me right before you snagged me, he said the CDC was on the line."
"The CDC?" Mary asked, brows raising as she followed Katie to where the door of the apartment used to be.
"Yeah, he had somehow gotten a line patched through to the phone I was carrying." Katie patted the wall of tentacles. "Any chance I can get through?" She asked, looking over her shoulder at Mary. "I think if I can get the phone, we can call the number back. Sure it's flimsy, but what else we got to go on right now?"
Mary thought for a moment, putting a finger up at Katie. "One sec," She said, "lemme check first." She looked up towards the ceiling and closed her eyes, her vision blinking back open on one of the exterior walls of the apartment, the tentacles that had wrapped around the outsides of the windows and door sprouting eyes to allow her the see all around outside their unit. It was early morning still, a heavy fog blanketing the parking lot. The silence unnerved her at first, until she realized she was still only listening through the ears on her physical head. A short mental nudge and she could hear the birds chirping and other early-morning sounds.
Mary opened her eyes and shook her head as her senses returned to her original set, blinking her eyes.
"Okay, looks like you're all clear," Mary said. "You remember where you put it?"
"I didn't 'put it' anywhere," Katie said. "You grabbed me through the door and the thing went flying. I'm betting it landed in the shrubs between here and Mrs. O'Rourke's place."
"Oh. Okay," Mary replied, stepping up to the door. "Actually, here, let me," She said, sticking her arm into the door, the appendage exiting out the other side as a lengthening tentacle winding its way through the air towards the bushes on either side of the walkway leading up to the two apartments. "Now lesse..." Mary said, biting her tongue in concentration as she sensed through the tentacle, looking between the leaves and branches of the shrubs for a cell phone.
"I'd ask what you're doing, but I'm not sure I want to know," Katie said, hands on her hips.
"I'm looking for the phone," Mary said, her tentacle now slithering snake-like along the ground, worming its way between the branches and roots of the foliage. "Oooh, spider. Bonus," She continued as her tentacle snared and consumed a small spider whose web she went through.
"Spider?" Katie asked, brow furrowing at her friend.
"Hey, anything that will keep the body satiated a little longer is all right with me..." Mary replied. "Ah! There!" She exclaimed, pulling away from the door, er arm stretching like a rubber band until it snapped back through the wall, the phone that she'd entwined in her tentacle now being held in her hand. KAtie's eyes popped wide, amazed.
"You know, if you could ever get the Body under control, you could make bank as a magician," Katie said, grinning slightly.
"Yeah, yeah, nothing up my sleeve," Mary said as she flipped open the cell phone. Mary raised an eyebrow at the picture on the phone's background, an athletic and attractive redheaded woman, looking to be in her thirties. "Whose phone is this, again?"
"The detective, uh, the guy on the bullhorn," Katie said, scratching her head. "You know, from yesterday."
"Right," Mary replied, wandering over to the "table" Katie had made in the middle of the room as she fiddled through the cell phone's menus. "Okay, 'call log'... 'incoming calls'... there we go." Mary looked up at her friend. "So, it looks like I can just call back and talk to whoever was supposed to talk to me."
"Worth a shot," Katie said, "Though I have to wonder why we went with the cloak-and-dagger vagueness before and now we're just calling them up?"
"We're unfortunately past the point of subtlety," Mary said as she dialed. "If it wasn't for those two cops- wasn't for *her*- this would still be an annoying carpet in the upstairs apartment." She put the phone up to her ear, tossing her hair away from her head. "Back then I could afford to go slow enough that people wouldn't think I was crazy. Now that the whole world's seen me get half my head blown off, I can't afford- yes, hello!" She said as someone on the other end picked up.
"Hello?" A woman asked, sounding confused.
"Yes, is this the Center for Disease Control?" MAry asked.
"What?" Came the confused reply. "No."
"Oh!" MAry said, blushing, "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong-"
"Where did you get this number?" The woman asked. "And where'd you get that phone?"
"I, uh, sorry, wrong number!" Mary said, clapping the phone shut.
"...What was that all about?" Katie asked, cocking her head to the side.
"Wrong number," Mary simply said, blushing.
"Wrong number?" Katie echoed. "Who did you call?"
"I dunno," Mary said, though she had he suspicions as she opneed up the cell phone again and saw the wallpaper of the thirty-something blonde. "But whoever it was I should have known a 503 area code wasn't the CDC." She scrolled up therought the incoming calls again, this time not picking the most recent number but one from the most alien area code. If it wasn't one she'd ever heard of, it was probably to an area she'd never called, which Atlanta, Georgia certainly was. Finding a 404 area code, she hit the "dial" button and put the phone back to her ear, shooting a glance at KAtie and Shandra. Katie was pretty due for a shot, though Mary knew the best thing would be for her to get rid of all her milk first. It still seemed gross to be drinking her best friedn's breast milk, but if it kept the Body happy she couldn't really complain, especially with how ghastly the alternative was.

"Center For Disease Control Main Switchboard, how may I direct your call?"
Mary let out a silent snarl as she staped her foot. Of course the call would go back into the switchboard!
"Uh, hi, yes, my name is Mary Carver, and I'm calling on behalf of uh, Oregon State Police... Officer..." Mary looked at Katie and nodded urgently.
"Uh... uhh... Jefferies! Lieutenant Jefferies!" She whispered.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant Jefferies," Mary said into the cell phone. "We contacted one of your researchers yesterday and I seem to have lost their name."
"Hmm... One moment please," The receptionist said, putting Mary on hold.
"Anything else you can tell me that might help me fake my way through this?" Mary whispered to Katie as she wrapped the hand around the lower half of the phone.
"Got nothin'," Katie said, spreading her hands.
Mary frowned and just hoped the receptionist would be easy to deal with.
"Yes, hello," The receptionist came back on, "I can't seem to find who you're looking for- do you remember what department the doctor you talked to was from?"
"Uh... Parasitic infections?" Mary ventured. "Er, Parasites and, uh..."
"Parasitology?" The operator suggested.
"Yeah, that's it," Mary replied. "Thanks."
"No problem, ma'am, I'll transfer you now. You have a nice day, now."
I don't think anyone calls the CDC when they're having a nice day, Mary thought.

"Parasitology," A man's voiced came over the phone a few seconds later.
"Yes, hello," Mary said, pacing the floor as she talked. "My name is Mary Carver, and I need one of you guys to come to Eugene, Oregon, because I've found an extremely lethal parasite that needs to be-"
"Wait, wait, how'd you get this number?" The man said.
"It doesn't matter!" Mary exclaimed. "Listen, two people are dead already, three more are infected, and there will be a lot more if somebody doesn't come down to contain this it's going to get a hell of alot worse!"
"Okay, okay," The man said, "Just calm down. Now, are you sure it's a parasite?"
Mary looked up at the ceiling, the mat of tentacles slowly pulsating and undulating. "Oh yeah, definitely."
"And you're sure this parasite you're seeing is harmful to humans?"
"Look, I've watched these things be born, enter a host, kill it, and emerge from the corpse tenfold more. These things are *lethal*."
"Okay..." The man said, now sounding a bit more curious. "And where are these parasites located?"
"They're in my apartment."
"And where are you now?"
"In my apartment still."
"But how-"
"Believe me, it's where you want me," Mary continued, anticipating his question. "I seem to be immune myself, for the most part, but the people I've come into contact with have had... *very* adverse reactions. I'm asymptomatic but extremely contaigous." Mary paused for a second, biting her lip. "Look, all I'm saying is that when you guys get down here, you need to be wearing full-bore haz-mat suits. This thing can go airborne, it can go through the skin... If any part of your body gets exposed to this stuff you can get infected."
There was a long silence on the phone. Mary wondered if she was coming off as insane.
"...How many dead so far?" He asked.
"Two dead, three infected, and this thing looks like it's not gonna stop spreading any time soon. You guys really need to get down here as soon as you can and quarantine this whole area."
"And have you seen a doctor locally or anything?"
"Are you kidding? One foot inside a doctor's office and you'd have a dozen more cases by the end of the day, if you're *lucky*."
"Well, I can't just order a full quarantine-"
"Listen!" Mary snapped, bending down as if attempting to physically crush the conversation. "People. Are. Dying! Send someone to 2330 Rosewood Park, Apartment D-6, right now, or else these damn things are going to kill everyone they can get their hands on!"
"All right, all right! Calm down!"
"No! No I won't be calm until you send someone down here in a haz-mat suit to take care of this! I don't want to see anyone else dead because of this and we need your help! Rrrgh!"
Mary clapped the phone shut in her hands and threw it across the room, a quick lurch and catch from Katie the only thing keeping the phone from shattering against the far wall.
"...What was *that*?" Katie asked as Mary dropped to her knees, putting her face in her hands. After a few moments of silence, Katie took a step towards her friend, brow furrowing. "Mary? You okay, honey?"
"...You know, it kinda sucks being all emotionally strung out and not being able to cry because tentacles don't have tear ducts," Mary said as she rubbed her palms in her eyes and stood.
"Honey, what was that back there? What got into you?"
Mary shook her head. "I dunno. I guess I'd just been placing so much hope in the CDC, like they were some sort of genie who would swoop down in here and figure everything out in a puff of smoke. To just hear them talk to me like a nut or something..." Mary shook her head. "Well hey," She continued, turning to look at Katie, "At least when I blew up I didn't have to hit anyone."
"Oh, hush," Katie said, holding the phone back out to Mary. "You wanna call back?"
MAry thought for a second, then shook her head. "Nah. I think this might actually be the better way. They'll come. They can't afford not to. Sure, the first guy might just be checking it out, but one demonstration of the 'parasite's' effects and they'll give me the attention I deserve."

[SoylentOrange]

I'm apparently on a roll. Enjoy!