#bedlamnyc

When Jessica woke up to find herself in an adult body again, her first thought was to be glad she hadn’t permanently altered any clothes.

Her second thought was to run to the bathroom mirror and check that this was truly HER adult body. You couldn’t be too careful anymore.

The day that followed was a genuinely nice one, considering. She went foraging for supplies and found water and some cans of soup that she cracked open for dinner. She followed up with some whiskey (not great but drinkable) and fell asleep with an unusual feeling of mild optimism that she might have found some sort of livable rhythm in this madness.

So when Jessica woke with a shock the next morning to feel actual sun on her face, she allowed herself to think for a moment that this truly could be over at last. The barrier had come down and they could go back to living like normal people instead of scrabbling post-apocalyptic rats. The unaccustomed hope was like a warm bubble in her chest, and it lasted approximately five seconds before she heard the crashing and screaming from outside the building.

Who knows anymore

Jessica jerked awake to the sound of growling. When she opened her eyes her baby raptors Ben and Jerry were growling and snapping disturbingly close to her face.

“Guys what is it? It’s just me,” she mumbled. For some reason even mumbling her voice sounded wrong. It didn’t seem to reassure the raptors either. Ben snapped at the hand she put out to calm him.

A hand that, even in the dim light, looked wrong. Familiar but not so much. It was too small.

Jessica blinked her eyes into focus, grabbed her phone and used the light to check the rest of her body. Her legs were way too short. Ben and Jerry went flying as she shot out of bed and scrambled to the bathroom mirror where her reflection confirmed her fears. The face looking back her was what Jessica recognized as her own when she was 13, complete with unfortunate chunky bangs.

“No no no what,” she babbled as she smacked herself in the face to see if she would wake up. She gripped the sink to test it’s solidity, then looked around. Everything else seemed normal and un-dreamlike. She sat down on the edge of the tub and noticed Ben and Jerry peeking around the corner.

“Go lie down,” she said firmly, pointing at their pile of blankets on the floor. They hesitated for a minute but ultimately continued moving toward her.

Jessica felt panic start to seize in her chest. The velociraptors were only the size of cats right now, but they could do a lot of damage if they stopped recognizing her authority over them. (At least that was what she had from the library books on wolves that were the closest thing she could find to a training manual.) She stood up and raised her arms to look as big as possible, then pitched her voice lower.

“Go. Lie. Down,” she practically growled, stomping her feet and pointing at their bed. “GO.”

They skittered away to their bed, where they lay down but kept wary eyes on her until she walked over and stroked each one on the head. “Good guys,” she reassured them, still keeping her voice lower and louder than usual. “Mom’s fine. Things just get a little weird here sometimes.”

Still breathing hard, Jessica sat down on the bed and rubbed between her eyes. Clearly this was another of the Zone’s whimsical little jokes and the best thing to do was shower and head over to Avengers tower to try to regroup.