catalyst: chapter 31
The Smiling Woman
The petals were softer, more floral than the ones she’d eaten back at the apartment. Those had been mostly dry things attached to seeds. Not this fully bloomed flower.
The smiling woman had gotten lucky, spotting the car pulled over on the side street. She recognized it as belonging to one of the old biddies that ate at the café, so when she walked by and the old woman was becoming something new, the smiling woman just watched like a predator.
The woman was peeling away into thousands of flower petals, layers and layers falling like a never-ending garden. Each shed was some new fantastical color, and as the woman turned to her audience, mouth silently screaming for help, a last layer of golden petals erupted from her form.
She was gone.
And she was delicious.
Her meal nearly done, the smiling woman contemplated taking the car, wondering how hard it would be to play off as her own if she ever got caught. She didn’t know enough about Margaret or whoever this used-to-be-woman was, but she couldn’t count on a family not missing her. Better to leave the car and keep walking to the bus.
At the stop, the smiling woman checked her messages, looking for the alerts she had set for news stories about sudden transformations, rare occurrences, freak accidents. Nothing of the sort. It had been a while since the last meal, this recent delicacy excluded.
It was dwindling. Whatever was happening or had happened was ending. The trail had gone cold, and it had done it too close to where she started.
And then the message.