Chapter 9 - Final Chapter

Something felt off as I left the bar, like my hair was standing on end. I felt a chill run down my spine, goosebumps raising on my arm. On a warm and sunny Los Angeles day, it was unusual to feel the breeze. I glanced quickly around me, but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I decided to call Courtney.

“Estelle, I can’t talk right now,” she sounded panicked.

“What’s happening? Are you okay?” Considering my already paranoid feeling, I needed to know what was wrong.

“Me and the girls are packing, we are getting out of the city. There is a giant fucking, I don’t know, lizard across the street. It’s- oh my god, it ate Michael!” I was more than confused at this point. Michael was our neighbor. An alligator? What did she mean by giant lizard?

“What do you mean by giant lizard?” She didn’t respond but I could hear her rushing the girls in the background. “Okay, I love you! I’ll let you go!”

As soon as I hung up, four helicopters flew past us overhead. The ground shook. My hair went on end again. I looked down the street to see three giant fucking lizards tearing through the road in front of the Santa Monica pier. In a matter of seconds, the beach was full of blood and mangled body parts ripped off of bodies. I turned and ran the other way, trying to get past the bustling crowd which had gathered and were running with me.

The screams were unbearable. I could feel blood splashing onto my skin. There were men standing on a street corner, yelling things like “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. Reporters stood, baffled, delivering the news to their dying breath. Planes flying overhead were yanked from their paths and thrown to the ground.

I risked a look over my shoulder. There was a group of government drones flying in attack position, but their shots didn’t do much. I felt my heart racing. I stopped and turned around, waiting for the lizards to finally reach me. Instead, as I stood there, I felt myself transforming.

There was a sharp pain as my teeth changed from our usual human omnivorous teeth, into those of a Great White shark. I grew five more eyes, putting the lizards into ultra sharp focus. Seven eyes altogether, like that of a spider’s. I was out there in the street, on my own. I felt my legs grow into longer, bulkier limbs that allowed me to run faster than your average car. I ran toward the lizards, jumping onto their bodies and hoisting myself up to their necks with their scales, using them like ladders.

I opened my mouth as wide as I could and tore at their throats, ripping off skin piece by piece. To them, I was a minor annoyance. I dug deeply into their necks, one by one, until my body fit in and I could reach their airways. I tore holes in them, causing them to slowly suffocate. They didn’t even know what hit them. Within a few minutes, each lizard carcass was on the ground.

People gathered around me. I transformed back into my regular human body. I was no longer Estelle, the singer.

I was Estelle, the giant fucking lizard killer.

And it felt good.