Page 9 of Marked By Moonlight

From the darkness enveloping her, she knew it was still morning. The bedside clock read four fifteen.

She had slept only four hours?

Strange. She had been so exhausted.

Her belly rumbled. Thoughts of swinging by Krispy Kreme wormed into her head. Hmmm, or breakfast tacos from Tia Rosa. Her growling stomach made the decision. Both.

Lifting her arms, she stretched, remembering too late to have a care for her shoulder. But surprisingly the stretch didn’t hurt. She rotated her shoulder gingerly, waiting to feel her muscles’ protest. Nothing happened. She moved her shoulder more vigorously, delighted to discover no pain at all. It felt fine. In fact, every last inch of her felt fine—great, even. Like a woman reborn, bounding withenergy. The alien impulse to don some sweats and take a Saturday morning jog seized her.

“Some drugs,” she muttered.

Then another urge asserted itself. Claire bounded from the bed. Arms outstretched, she made her way through the gloom to the bathroom.

Moments later she emerged and picked up her phone from the nightstand, noticing the missed calls. Apparently, she’d slept through her ringing phone.

Grateful she had her phone in her pocket and hadn’t lost it alongside her purse, she played the voicemail on speaker, wondering who would have called her in the middle of the night.

Returning to her bathroom, she flipped on the light and squinted against the glare. Giving her reflection a cursory inspection, she reached for her toothbrush as the voicemail played in the tight space.

Her gaze flew back to the mirror and the face that was her own. Yet not. She leaned forward warily over the sink, as though the woman in the mirror might leap out to harm her.

Her face was… different.

She stared hard, trying to put her finger on the difference.

“Claire, it’s your mother,” the voice rang out, tinny and jarring, from her phone. “Wanted to see if you want roast or spaghetti this Sunday. I can do either. Let me know. Love you. Bye.”

Tearing her attention from the mirror, she gave her phone a peculiar look—as though it held answers to the strangeness of that message.

Like clockwork, she ate dinner at her parents’ house every Sunday, and although her mother often checked to see what she preferred to eat, she had never called in the middle of a Friday night to verify. Shrugging, she returned to scrutinize her face, at last pinpointing the difference.

Her eyes. They weren’t the same mousy brown that looked back at her every day. They were silver. No light blue or grayish blue either. Silver. A startling silver, reminiscent of ice… and something else. Something familiar. Something recent. A memory niggled at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite touch it.

Her fingers lightly grazed her cheekbone just below those strange eyes. Could drugs alter one’s eye color? Was this some sort of allergic reaction to the codeine? Or the tetanus shot?

She played her next voicemail and Maggie’s voice blared from her phone, penetrating her racing thoughts. Kids whooped and screamed in the background. “Just checking in. Call me if you get around to it. See you tomorrow…”

Why would Maggie think she was going to see her today? On Saturday? Shaking her head, Claire grabbed her remote control off the dresser and flipped on the television, clicking through channels until she found the local news. A human Barbie doll reported the early morning weather in cheery, singsong tones.

“Looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous day today. A great way to begin the week. Maybe it will make those headed-back-to-work-Monday blues easier…”

The remote control slipped from her suddenly slack fingers and thudded to the carpet. She backed up, sinking onto the bed as realization washed over her.

She had slept two nights.As impossible as it seemed, it was four fifteenMonday morning.

“No one can sleep that long,” she whispered over the drone of yet another message from her mother.

She jumped up and rushed back to the mirror, gripping her hands around the edge of her sink until her knuckles turned white. Inhaling through her nostrils, she lifted her face and met her gaze dead on. It was like looking at a stranger. Those eyes chilled her.

“What the hell’s going on?” she demanded of her reflection.

The last thing she expected was an answer.

“You’re one of them now,” a gravelly voice said.

She spun around, a scream lodged in her throat as she peered into the far corners of her room, searching for the owner of that voice.

He was a shadow. A large, motionless form occupying her wicker chair—presumably where he’d been sitting since the minute she awoke.

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