It had been a rough day, Ahorta's nightmares were getting worse and worse and she needed to slowly get over them. Very slowly. It was raining outside, the perfect time for everything to get washed, all the vermin were taking shelter in the sewers and Ahorta had ventured out to the bookstore. Browsing the shelves, she grabbed a couple of books. Insects Encyclopedie, Pestilence and Disease, Roaring Reptiles: A Kids Learning Book, The Dangers of Weather, and Largest Collection of Clown Costumes. She brought it up to the register and tugged at her gloves while the cashier beeped each of the books into the system.

"Find everything OK?" she asked, only doing what the bookstore requires her to do. Her voice sounded bored, even though she had a fake smile pasted on her face. Bookstore junkies. Ahorta did not respond, she only glanced at her and winced. Slime began to creap out of the Bookstore Junkie's nose, slowling dripping down her lip. Ahorta snatched her books and brought them close to her before the ooze dropped on them. The woman looked a little concerned, wondering if Ahorta would steal them, but Ahorta stood her ground.

"That'll be $42.78. Do you have a Buncha Books N Savin's card?" she asked, not making eye contact this time. Ahorta reached into her pocket and pulled out a ziplock bag, pulling $60 from the stack of dozens of $20s. It was not smart, but she had backups, no bank accounts, just pure cash. The lady counted out the change aloud as if Ahorta was actually listening. "Ten, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, seventeen ten, seventeen twenty, seventeen twenty-one, seventeen twenty-two is your change. Would you like a bag with that?"

"Would you like to stop talking?" Ahorta snapped, the girl was now covered in goo, from head to toe. "You shouldn't even have a mouth," she growled before grabbing her books and change. Quietly, she put the money back in her ziplock bag and the woman frowned, muttering some curse words under her breath. Something about how no one was nice in New York. No one should EVER be nice to an ooze monster!

Ahorta buried her books under her arm and left, walking down the street, her face mask securely pinned to her face. A few more blocks of pure rain. She had already taken her own bag that she had checked for trackers over the books to keep them from getting damaged and she walked to a hotel. It was a nicer hotel, they were cleaner.

"One room, near an exit door," Ahorta said, keeping her head low so she did not look at the woman. If she looked up, she could be a snake, she could be a frog, she could be a goat... though Ahorta had never had fears of goats. Then again, she never thought about their fur, those long curly horns sticking out, the beard that hangs off their bottom lip. They were mutant sheep. How beautiful.

"One bed or two?" the clerk asked while she clicked things into her computer.

"Two," she nodded. It was best people thought she was not alone so they would not try to break in her room.

"Name and liscense," the woman asked.

"Katie Turnstile and I don't drive, here is my school ID," she said, passing over a school ID she had found once. It was some Auburn School. The woman frowned, but when Ahorta pulled out her money, she clicked it into the system. After a few more glances from the woman, wondering if the girl under the facemask really was Katie Turnstile, she gave Katie the keys.

"I hope you enjoy your stay, Mrs. Turnstile," she smiled, even though Ahorta did not make eye contact. The masked woman made her way up to her room: 321, that was backwards counting. The world was backwards.

Pulling the key out from her pocket, Ahorta inserted it in the card slider and quickly pulled it out. Red. Damn. It was such a pretty color. Why did red mean incorrect or error or stop and green mean all the good things? Green was the color of reptiles, red was the color of blood. So much prettier. She repeated the same step, this time it flashed green and she opened the door and walked inside. Her little leather duffle bag was placed on the bed next to her books and she opened it, revealing loads of items she uses to clean a room. First, she took out the metal detector and began to wand the room, making sure to not miss a single corner of the room. It went off a few times for the door knobs, nails and one thumbtack that was stuck in there, but nothing else. Next, she used it on the floor, slowly moving around the room, even getting underneath the bed. When she had finished, she took out cleaning supplies and began to scrub down the room, removing the paintings from the wall and turning them to face the wall.

When she was done scrubbing, she removed the bed sheets and threw the top mattress off of the bottom one. There was a scandalous magazine between the bed and she tossed it out of the room and into the hallway, not caring who found it. When all of the sheets had been removed, she began to set up her own sheets, they were purely white, low thread count sheets that had been washed so many times they were worn down. She made sure all of the electricity was off: TV, lights, bathroom light, she even removed the batteries from the remote, it could be a recorder that runs on batteries.

When the home front was safe and sound, she extracted her books from the wet bag. She examined them for a good thirty minutes, running her fingers along the spine to make sure nothing was hidden inside, flipping through every page to ensure there wasn't a stack of 10 stuck together with a recorder inside. When she had finally finished up and everything was safe and sound, she opened the first book: Roaring Reptiles. She figured she could do the hardest first and then it could only get easier. Right?

The cover had a photo of a lizard, a green lizard with a long body and a whippingly frightening tail. It's yellow eyes were staring right at the camera when the photo was taken and now it was staring directly at Ahorta, peering deeper into her hopes and deepest fears. It flicked it's tongue at her and hissed. Frightened, she threw the book from her lap, watching in terror as it slid under the TV stand, hissing under the dark mahogony. Maybe she needed a break.

The world outside was cruel and impossible. Still, it had one thing on her that she couldn't beat: fear. With a low grumble and a mental kick to her face, she picked up the next book and opened it for pictures of bad weather. Since the pictures were frozen in time, it really did not bother her to look at them. Excited how unafraid she was, she quickly flipped through the book, scanning each picture without feeling threatened. It was a safe book, but it was also very boring. She flipped through a few more pages quickly and stopped when she had slammed the book shut. Her plan was to read the book fully, but instead, she took off her gloves and placed her hand on the book.

A slight tingle rippled through her prints as the acid slowly leaked out of her hand and into the book. At first, it ate a whole through the glossy cardboard finish of the book, but after that, it quickly ate through the small cardboard and pages of the book. When she had eaten through the book with her handprint, she continued to grab the book in places it still existed and ate through it until she crumpled it into a ball and it vanished in her hand. With a feeling of victory, she put the gloves back on and pulled out the next book on clowns.

It seemed silly that she had such a fear, but even the cover sent a chill down her spine. For safety's sake, she removed her glove again, but just one so she could change the page without eating through it. The sight of the clown's face made her shiver, so she put her two fingers over the eyes and ate through the painting. Still, the red nose and giant discolored lips made her sick. Clowns were sick people in oversized clothes with the inability to stop smiling! How could anyone be happy in size 28 shoes with a pure white face and a bowtie?

She flipped through each individual page, placing her two fingers over the eyes to eat them away. After a few more pages, she began to get rid of their noses too and then their mouths as well until she just placed her whole hand over the clown and drowned them in the book before they could jump into her reality. She could feel the pages struggling against her, trying to spit clowns into the world, but she kept her hand firm on the book until it had eaten all the way through to the skin under her pants. A cut out of a hand now rested on her pants and she started tearing at the remains of the book until it too disentigrated.

Her eyes had narrowed, she was beating the system and with relative ease. The book of spiders flittered a little and the pages sprouted out like legs, eight of them to be exact. A picture of a spider's face reared up as the cover and hissed at her. With defiance, she hissed back, but another hiss sounded from behind her. The book on reptiles had stretched in length and now resembled a black and yellow snake with beady eyes and a bookstore receipt as its flickering tongue. Ahorta's paranoia had been kicking and she did not not know how to stop it, these books were real to her, she was in immediate danger confined in the limitations of her own mind.

With eyes watering, she opened her mouth loud and screamed at the top of her lungs. Footsteps could be heard from the rooms around her and shadows crept across the walls, settling at the door. Loud bangs and knocks could be heard coupled with a few "hello? are you ok?"s. They were coming to kill her, they were coming to take her away. Slowly, she got to her feet and climbed onto the bed and leapt to the other one as the snake and spider books nipped at her heels. Quickly, she darted off the bed and looked out the peephole to her room. She could see all of them, all of the alcoholics and the prostitutes, all of the worms and maggots, they all huddled around her room. One of the frogs stepped forward with a key and knocked a few times, asking her to open up. Book creatures in the front, crowds of creatures in the back. At least she knew the creatures outside had heartbeats, how exactly would she kill a book creature?

The Insect Encyclopedia fluttered on the floor before ripping open. Every little piece of paper folded into different pieces, forming page mosquitos, moths, bugs and such. Each piece flew straight at her and she screamed, swatting her hands around frantically in the air. With one touch of her hand, some of the bug pages went down, but they came back as more while the snake and spider duplicated the method of page multiplication and sprouted children. The spiders crawled up her legs, the moths entangled themselves in her hair and the snakes nipped at her knees and feet. She felt the doorknob turn and a slight amount of pressure against her back, they had broken into her fort. There were only two options, lock them out and die by paper creatures, or let them in and kill them all.

The door creaked open and a eye could be seen from the other side of the door. A bright green eye stared right back at her, piercing her every fear. What was it? Was it a snake? A frog? A newt? Whatever it was, it was trying to get in. While still flailing her arms around to get the paper moths out of her hair, she she moved away from the door and let them into the room of rogue reads. In human form, everyone outside, a total of about four people, stared at the empty room and the girl whose hair was completely messed up. They watched the girl in the face mask swat at her own hair frantically and watched as she dropped to the floor, rolling around violently and tearing pieces out of the books on the floor.

In their inhuman form, there was a frog, a worm, a maggot, and a prostitute. The frog was the one that approached first, sputtering small ribbits that sounded like he was asking if she was ok. He was tricking her. He had been doing this for years, learning how to act human, it was perfectly reasonable that he had gotten good at talking as a human. She would not be tricked, she would not be taken, she would not let herself be hurt or gooed on. "I'm not going with you!" she screamed.

Suddenly, she shot to her feet and wrapped her hands around the frog's neck. It was so slimey and so gross! She could feel the wet cold goo seeping between her fingers and running down her fore arms. How much goop could frogs create? As she kept her grip tight, he struggled and grabbed onto her hands with his sticky little fingers with those gross fingerballs and the tips. The hooker screamed from behind him and stumbled to get out of the rooms in her heels and tight, black, leather skirt. She tripped in the doorway and pulled the worm back to get through. All the while, the frog underneath her sunk to the floor, his strength leaving him quickly as he continued to claw her her grip.

"HELPPPPPPP! HELP ME PLEASEEEE! HELP US! CALL THE POLICE! HELPPPP!" the hooker called from the the hallway she ran across. She made occassional stops to bang on doors and flail her arms in front of the camera. A few people pressed their faces against the peephole and pulled out their cell phones to call the police. The front desk already knew due to the cameras, the woman's plea for help had paid off. Hotel security was already on its way up, trying to make up for the time it would take for the police to arrive at the scene. Hopefully, they would arrive soon, the worm and maggot still had not cleared the room unharmed.

Standing in her way was a giant maggot and a slimey worm. Slowly, she pulled herself off the ground to look at the two disgusting insects. Their comrade lay lifeless on the ground, his hand lay limp on her boot. In annoyance and disgust, Ahorta kicked the human's hand off and glared at the other two in the room. With one swift movement, the worm had pinned himself against the door, struggling to get out of the room. He reached his hand back to grab his companion, but the maggot did not budge and inch, he stood in shock, watching Ahorta approach. The worm started yelling for help through the door and the security yelled back in response, telling him to remain calm and step away from the door. Most of the cops that had pulled up were making their way up the stairs, a few stragglers remained with the lit up disco ball cop cars.

The worm did not obey, he remained against the door, fumbling with the locks even though it had been unlocked in the first place. Ahorta quickly grabbed the flat screen in her room, eating through the wires that connected it to the wall with her acidic properties, and swung it in full force at the maggot. Though the flat screen was heavier than she expected, she was still able to bring it down on the maggot, hoping to squish the giant pestilence and restore peace to her room. The blow sent the maggot onto the floor, his body jerking and wiggling as it attempted to get over the shock that overwhelmed his mobility. Just as the worm pulled the door open, the security team shot their tazors at Ahorta, sending a series of muscle convulsions throughout her body. For a moment, she wiggled on the ground like a fish out of water and the cops approached, arriving seconds after the security guards fired their shots.

One of the cops took the opportunity to cuff the wiggling woman while the others checked the maggot and frog in the room. While Ahorta attempted to make every noise possible, the tazors embedded in her back kept her mouth from making audible words. They would take her away...for now.

The cold steel from the handcuffs wrapped around Ahorta's wrists. She could feel the acid eating through the handcuffs, but she wiggled her hands to slow down the process. It was imperative that the cops left with the firm belief that she was under control. Cops tend to loosen up when they believe they have the situation under control. The medical crew entered the room when Ahorta was cuffed and began focusing on the maggot with the flat screen on his head. Maggots were harder to smash, she should have squished the worm first. Firmly, she was lifted to her feet and escorted down the hall, a cop firmly gripping her arm on either side. Eyes followed her out of the hotel as she dragged her feet along down the hall and down the stairs.

Warmth tingled her cheeks as they stepped out of the hotel and the sun tickled her pale skin. She squinted her eyes and continued down the walk of shame. Instead of a traditional cop car taxi, her form of transportation would be in a truck, good, it had more room for her to move. The two cops on her side opened the door and escorted her inside the truck. They had her sit in the corner and sat one on her left and on in front of her. The cop in front, an Officer Geraly, according to his nameplate, tapped on the wall separating the bed of the truck from the driver. The driver nodded and began their route to the precinct. Struggling right now would not be a good idea, cops were still around, once they were well on their way, she would begin her escape. Cops usually didnt know how to keep her in control, and the handcuffs had already disentigrated behind her back. She remained in her seated position and placed a finger against the wall behind her. Using her finger, she traced an arrow-head shaped piece of shrapnel from the back of her seat.

Lightly, she dropped her new formed weapon behind her rump and pulled her sleeve up over her hand so she could grab it without eating through the material immediately. Ahorta closed her eyes and listened until the sound of sirens decreased. Time up...

A small little plink sound jerked the attention of the officer in front of her to her laps. There was a reason prison transporters were urged not to handcuff prisoners behind their backs, it made it impossible to see what they were doing with their hands. Ahorta's right arm twitched a little as she wrapped her grip around the shrapnel arrow head. The realization hit the officer dead in the face while Ahorta's newly formed weapon hit him dead in the neck. The officer at her side had already fired his tazer at the mutant and it pierced her skin only to be eaten away due to the amount of adrenaline pumping acid through her system. It shocked her for a second while the officer pulled out his gun and loaded the barrel with a bullet with a single click.

Ahorta's ungloved hand wrapped around his ankle and the officer fired a shot. The bullet had been fired while he dropped to the ground in pain and as a result, did not fire where he intended for it to go. It embedded itself in the side of the armored truck and the driver struggled to pull over and assist his two fallen comrades. When he had parked the truck on the side of the road, he exited it, leaving the door wide open as he rushed around to the back and began fumbling with the keys and locks on the doors. Ahorta had already pinned her bare arms and face against the front of the truck bed, eating through the metal until she had broken through to the driver's seat. The door at the back opened and the driver had his weapon ready, but Ahorta had already climbed into the seat and closed the door. In a rush, the driver did not turn off the car and left the keys in the ignition...humans...

She put the truck in gear and began to drive it, making sure she did not hold her hand on the stick shift for long enough to eat through it. As the truck began driving off, she struggled to put on her gloves while the driver dove into the back of the truck. Pulling himself across the floor, he pulled himself to acidic hole and reached through to grab Ahorta. Her gloves were back on and she shivered at the contact with a human. His forked tongue snuck out of his mouth, she had caught him, a creature in disguise. Humans were so vulnerable to intruders.

Letting out a loud scream, Ahorta jerked the steering wheel to the left and then quickly to the right. The truck started swerving around the road, impacting little cars and other larger trucks. With every swerve or impact, the driver slid away from the crazy mutant. Officer Geralry's body was the first to exit the truck, slamming into the sides of the seats in a ping pong fashion until he finally slid out of the truck. The injured officer held on tightly to the hole, but a few of the impacts sent his injured foot into the side of the vehicle and he finally let go in a fit of pain and slid out onto the street maybe 100 feet from the deceased officer.

The driver proved to be the hardest to get out of the car, but his grip on the destroyed metal was getting tougher and tougher to hold onto as the small pieces of jagged metal embedded themselves in the palm of his hand. Running out of options, Ahorta slammed on the breaks and the driver flew through the hole she had dug and into the windshield. Since the windshield was bulletproof, it only knocked him out on the stick shift. The truck began jerking around and Ahorta pushed him back out of the hole. It was time to see Daddy.