-7-
I plunged my hand into the box and scooped up a handful of the chalky powder. I threw it at the albino, trying to believe that this would save me. I threw a second handful, then a third.
He laughed.
“Is that it? Your best effort? Oh my, I truly hope you give me more sport than that.”
He reached to brush the dust from his cheek.
The change began.
For a moment, he seemed puzzled.
His hands grew thick. They grew large and gray, like dense lumps of clay. His face twisted and changed. His shirt split as his chest swelled. A horn thrust from where his nose had been.
He dropped to all fours with a heavy crash, then lowered his head, aiming the horn at me. He took a step with one hulking leg. And then another step. There was less than two yards between me and death.
A scream ripped through the room. But it didn’t come from any living creature. The air filled with shrieks as the ancient wood gave way beneath the weight. One leg crashed through the floor. His chest hit with an ear-numbing boom.
For an instant, that was it. He raised his head toward me and bellowed a cry of rage. The eyes within the rhino’s face were hot coals of hate.
He struggled to pull the leg free of the hole.
I backed up another step.
He fell.
He dropped so suddenly, it was almost as if he’d been sucked through the hole. An instant later, I heard another crash. Then another, fainter. And far away—a thud, a wet smack of a meat against concrete.
That was it. He was in the basement.
I inched toward the hole as if I was moving on thin ice, expecting the floor to collapse at any moment. But the floor held. Down, far down, so far I felt dizzy as I looked, lay a crumpled mass of white and red.
Around me, the lifeless eyes of countless animals bore witness to the moment. A sound from down the hall caught my attention. I edged past the hole and went back to Sam Yung’s office.
“How you doing?” I asked John. He’d managed to sit up, with his back against the wall, but he still looked pretty dazed.
“Did we win?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I held out a hand and helped him to his feet.
He winced. “Oh, man. My head hurts.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You should see the other guy.”
I walked with John back to his place. As we passed through the streets of Chinatown, I thought about how foreign each of us is when he leaves his small part of the world, and how much there is that none of us will ever understand.
“You know what’s scary?” I asked John when we reached his front door.
“Your face?”
“Besides that.”
“I can’t imagine anything scarier, but go ahead.”
“If Richter was a bigger monster than Sam Yung, I guess it’s possible there’s someone out there who’s a bigger monster than Richter.”
John patted me on the shoulder. “If there is, I’m sure you’ll run into him—and drag me along. But maybe that can wait for another day.
“Fine with me.”
At least I knew there was a little less evil in the world. It was a small change, but a good change. And that’s something to be glad about.
– End of Morph –
