Presto Chango

“Let me take a body scan for your I.D. card and you’ll be all set,” Rock Reynolds, Captain of Security says. “Hmm. You have a tattoo on your left wrist.”

“The Ace of Spades,” Brandon McCarthy answers. “It’s from my days as a Ranger. Our company was known as ‘the Smokin’ Aces.’”

Reynolds takes stock of his newest guard. At 6’ 5” with a contoured frame and gym-honed muscles, Brandon resembles a fierce linebacker ready to blitz a quarterback. Just as important are his soft, trustworthy, almost boyish looks, and his capacity for compassion mixed with his sterling service record.

Reynolds scratches his bristled grey hair, his sharp features turning more somber. “You were told about the alien during your orientation, but this bears repeating. Camp Millard Fillmore is a priority one, clandestine operation. Books and articles have been written about Area 51, but there’s never been anything in the press about us. We house a dozen alien species the government and military believe are threats to national security. One of these is a Mutatio, the species you’ll be guarding. We lovingly refer to our guest, as Presto Chango’.”

“Is it true he’s a changeling?”

“Yes. And it can read your thoughts, and transform itself into anyone, you, me, or whoever it wants to be. The effect lasts for half an hour. There’s one thing it can’t do. It can’t recreate our imperfections. If you have a scar, a filling, or a tattoo, it can’t duplicate it. For example, that limp of yours…”

“I’d like to say I got it in combat, but I got hit by a car in Syria when we were going house to house, and the wife of a man we were questioning tried to help him escape.”

“That’s really taking one for the team,” Reynolds replies. “The most important thing you need to remember is the Mutatio feed on our emotions, hoping to use our guilt or sympathy against us. The last two men assigned here couldn’t cope with the visions Presto Chango planted in their minds. The alien’s goal is to escape and report back to its superiors that Earth is weak and ready for the taking. We can’t let that happen, understand?”

Axel Thorn, Brandon’s shift partner, greets him with a firm handshake and a warning, “Don’t let your guard down for a moment or Presto Chango will burrow into your head and make you relive the most agonizing moments in your life.”

The fire plug-shaped former Navy Seal checks the bank of security monitors. There are four monitors in each corner of Presto Chango’s austere and antiseptic room, as well as two mounted in the ceiling outside of its cell.

“I’ll take the first shift manning the cameras,” Axel says. “You watch the door to the alien’s cell. I don’t care if Presto Chango wails like Janis Joplin having twins, don’t open the door to its cell.”

Brandon sits in a stylish-looking leather chair that doesn’t take long to feel uncomfortable, wishing he had something to read to pass the time. Sighing, he checks his phone for the third time in the last ten minutes.

“… Mister… Hey, mister…,” a child-like voice calls out.

Standing, Brandon looks through the small window in the cell door. A child in short pants and a Transformer t-shirt sits on the bed, his short legs swaying innocently.

Brandon moves closer, gasping as he recognizes the child.

“Chris? It can’t be. You died twenty years ago.”

“Because of you,” the boy says accusingly.

Brandon closes his eyes, hoping he’s fallen asleep in the chair and is dreaming.

“A big brother is supposed to look after his little brother,” Chris says.

“I warned you not to jump.”

“I did it for the honor of the McCarthy brothers.”

“I bet you’re sorry now.”

“Are you?” Chris asks.

“I turned my back for a second and you were gone.”

“Well, I’m here now. I’m offering you a chance to apologize to me.”

Brandon takes a deep breath, steadying himself. A sweet smell invades his nostrils.

“…Big League Chew Bubble Gum…”

It was all Chris seemed to eat. He always smelled like a pink cloud. Brandon thinks back to the two of them having a catch in the backyard, and a flood of memories follows… Clipping baseball cards to the spokes of their bikes, sneaking a cigarette in the shed and coughing their lungs out, reading comic books, building model ships…

Brandon pulls himself away from his brother’s bottomless, sad eyes.

“Well played, Presto Chango, But I’m not biting. My brother’s not inside of a cell telling me I need to beg for his forgiveness. I’ve done that practically every day of my life, and it’s pretty convenient for you that I haven’t gotten an answer until now.”

The alien’s mischievous smile is a carbon copy of his brother’s.

“I’m here to remove the guilt you’ve been carrying for so long,” the imitation of Chris says.

“It would be nice to bury it, but you can’t help me.”

“I can send you back to the moment before your brother died, so you can save him. In order to do that, you have to let me out. All you have to do is open the door…”

Chris moves closer to the door, his eyes boring into Brandon’s wavering stare.

“…Open the door…”

Brandon covers his ears, shutting his eyes.

“You’re staying in that cell.”

“You’re in a different kind of cell, Brandon. One of your own making.”

Axel pulls Brandon away from the door.

Brandon’s head throbs as he collapses into the chair.

“Wow. Presto Chango went after you pretty hard,” Axel says. “You okay?”

Brandon slowly rises from the chair. Moving to the cell door, he looks through the window.

A luminous, transparent being with eyes the size of goggles, a pointed head, and four tentacles looks back at him.

“That’s what it really looks like,” Axel comments. “You remember this sight and next time it might not get into your head.”

Presto Chango squawks at Brandon, its voice akin to a honking goose.

“I knew what he was trying to do, but I couldn't stop him. The smells, the things he made me see seemed so real.”

“Presto Chango’s so devious it could fool the snake from the Garden of Eden. The researchers said it secretes some sort of gas that puts people at ease and makes them more compliant. The problem is we can’t see it or stop it,” Axel says. “Who was that boy it changed into?”

“My brother. He died twenty years ago jumping off a cliff.”

“On purpose?”

“It was at night. He must’ve thought he was jumping into the water. He landed face-first into a bunch of rocks.”

Brandon tries to shake off the memory of his brother’s mangled body and his mother’s broken wail when she hears the news.

“The alien tries to get to me through Babs, my late wife,” Axel says. “We were going to have a cookout. She was pushing me to go to the store, but I wanted to watch the rest of the ballgame. So, she went. Some nut bag with a machine gun and enough ammo to wipe out an army charged into the store, and, well, you can guess the rest. It’s always nice to see her even if it really is some ugly alien pretending to be her. That is until she starts hammering away at my guilt, begging me to open the door and let her out so we can be together again... It tears at you, you know? I can smell the perfume she used to wear. Sometimes Presto Chango even conjures up The Beach Boy’s ‘Only With You’. It was our wedding song. I ask you, is that fair to hit me in such a personal spot?... I tell you what, Brandon. You watch the cameras for a while. I’ll take the door.”

“You sure?”

“I want to talk to Babs.”

A sporadic night’s sleep leaves Brandon still feeling mentally bewildered. Entering the utilitarian office, he says, “I re-read the Mutatio’s file. Why not let some of his people settle here?”

“Because first off, they’re not people,” Axel answers. “Secondly, we can’t have a bunch of mind-reading changelings loose. They’d cause a panic, and worse, they could take over the government and we’d never know it.”

“The way our politicians have been acting lately, I think they already have.”

Axel smirks, looking at the security screens.

“It’s back to its original form,” Axel notes.

The translucent alien looks up at the overhead camera.

“It’s like it can hear us,” Brandon says.

“I think it can.”

“If they’re so advanced, how come they haven’t simply invaded and taken over?”

“Presto Chango’s their advanced scout. They’re waiting for its report. No report, no invasion. That’s one reason why it’s under constant observation, so it can’t contact its superiors. You feel up to manning the door?”

Brandon looks through the window at Presto Chango. The creature raises its tentacles as if to greet him.

After several hours of silence, Brandon is shaken from his malaise when he hears the creature stirring.

“Brandon? Are you still out there?”

Brandon cringes at the sound of his father’s voice.

A facsimile of his father looks at him from the other side of the door. Anson McCarthy still has the same grim expression and a long dark handlebar mustache that covers his unsmiling lips like it did in his late thirties. He grew it while developing a taste for rye after Chris died and his wife, June, had fled their toxic environment. His love affair with Rye turned a quiet man into a short-tempered, violent monster who seemed to answer every question with his fists.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Anson asks.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

The voice that emanates from Presto Chango has the same gruff and grainy quality as his father’s.

“How about we talk about second chances?”

“Second chances? You beat me because you blamed me for the loss of your favorite son. You didn’t have any love for the son you had left.”

“It was the liquor. Most of the time I was so blacked out I didn’t know what I was doing. I want to make it up to you. I know I was cruel to you and your mother. I want to be like the man you knew before Chris died.”

Brandon’s mind drifts back to sitting behind the wheel of the family station wagon learning to drive when he was eight, his father laughing because his feet couldn’t reach the pedals... He remembers holding up the trophy after his baseball team won the championship, seeing his dad clapping, and how proud he looked… Brandon can feel his father’s supportive arm around his shoulder after he’d cut himself on a kitchen knife and gotten stitches, and he smells the juicy burgers his dad used to grill in the summer…

Then he hears his mother raising her voice and screaming as he slaps her…

“You beat Mom so savagely the last time she lost her memory,” Brandon says. “It was bad enough that she didn’t know who I was, that she couldn’t love me anymore. But in a way, she was lucky. She didn’t know she had a loveless marriage or a dead son. She walked away before you could finish the job and kill her.”

“Leaving you alone to face me,” Anson says. “I was in pain, son, just as much as you, if not more. I drank to drown my problems, but you were a reminder of everything that had gone wrong in my life, so I lashed out at you...”

Brandon can feel his anger and resentment washing away, replaced by pity.

“Let’s talk face to face, son. Let me out.”

Brandon snaps back to reality.

“You lured me in, Presto Chango, but then you upped the ante too soon. My father was either too angry or too drunk to ask for anybody’s forgiveness.”

Presto Chango’s reply is soothing and dream-like.

“I was a good man once. You chose to block that part of your life out.”

“Because I spent a lot more years feeling hated than loved,” Brandon replies sternly.

“You were there the day things changed, remember? I came home to find my brother in bed with June. It was the ultimate betrayal.”

“I thought it was just another unprovoked burst of your foul temper,” Brandon says. “What I remembered most was that you beat your brother half to death. I thought it was a cruel twist of irony because I didn’t have a brother anymore and you were trying to kill yours.”

“Knowing the truth, what would you have done?”

Brandon hesitates. “I’m my father’s son… And that’s the heaviest cross I’ve had to bear. For a while, I was destined to be as mean and worthless as he was. I nearly killed myself with liquor and drugs to try and forget the things you did to us. If I hadn’t joined the Rangers, I would have wound up…”

“Like me?”

“It’s not my fault you ended up alone, drunk, homeless, and eating dog food.”

“You don’t sound convinced. Is that because you remember that after your brother died and your mother left, I tried to reach out to you, but you turned your back on me?”

“You were a hard man to love.”

“I was a father and a husband in agony because I couldn’t be either of those things anymore. You’d already made it clear you were ashamed that your old man was a janitor by telling me not to come to your baseball games anymore, or by keeping your friends away from the house, and not introducing me to the girls you liked.”

Brandon’s guilt and rage collide in an explosion of emotion.

“So, you expect me to apologize to you? I should beat you the way you used to beat me.”

He sees himself reaching for the door handle and pulls his hand away.

“Almost, Presto Chango, almost.”

“All I want to do is apologize and talk this out,” his father says. “Please, open the door.”

Brandon backs away from the window.

Anson’s image begins to flutter and wobble.

He turns into a transparent, squawking alien.

“You’re getting creative, but I’m not letting you out.”

Brandon plops down in the chair next to Axel, who continues to watch the security monitors.

“Anything going on?”

“Densmore’s watching the door. It’s always a good show when Presto Chango reads his mind.”

“Why?” Brandon asks, looking at the screens focused on the inside of Presto Chango’s cell.

Brandon’s voice rises with surprise. “Oh. I see.”

“Yeah. Densmore’s always had a weakness for strippers. Married three of them.”

Brandon and Axel snicker as they watch a buxom, barely clad woman gyrate around the cell.

Axel leans closer to the screen.

“Hard to believe that woman’s really a dream-sucking monster with four tentacles, isn’t it?”

“I want to talk to you, Brandon,” a calm, resonant voice says.

Brandon doesn’t recognize the man’s tone or inflection.

Rising from his chair, Brandon looks into Presto Chango’s cell.

The creature’s form remains unchanged, its bottomless eyes looking mournfully at Brandon.

“I don’t have any more dead brothers or abusive relatives you can conjure up. Who are you trying to be now?” Brandon asks.

“Me.”

“You have a story?”

“Every living creature in the universe has one,” Presto Chango replies. “I have a family, just like you, with two small ones who want to see their father again. They have been waiting for me to come home for three years. Our planet is dying, polluted by our enemies in a desperate attempt to win an unwinnable war. I watched many of my friends die when a poisonous wind swept through our city. I saw them convulse, foam at the mouth, clutch at their bleeding eyes, and die whispering their small one’s names. We face certain death if we do not find a new planet to inhabit. I would die happy if I could go home and spend just a few moments with my family. But if I do not return to my home world soon, there will be nothing to return to. Let me out. Let me go home.”

“You know I can’t.”

Brandon’s conscience conjures up a picture of Presto Chango, his tentacles holding and protecting his family. They huddle together as the ground around them bubbles and a toxic cloud envelopes them.

“After what I have told you, after what you have seen, can you look me in the eye and tell me I cannot go home?”

Presto Chango begins to morph into another shape.

Brandon’s eyes blink in disbelief.

He stands on the other side of the glass looking at himself.

Captain Reynolds rushes to Presto Chango’s cell.

Axel is standing by the cell’s open door.

Reynolds enters, turning over the corpse on the bed.

“Dead?” Reynolds asks.

“Based on what we know about this species, yes.”

“It was a matter of time before the creature tried to change into one of us. It looks like it tried to change into McCarthy but the strain of it was too much for it.”

“Too much emotional baggage to process,” Axel replies.

“Where is McCarthy?” Reynolds asks.

“Dinner break. He passed me in the hall as I was coming here to replace him. Brandon’s usually pretty talkative, but he seemed to have something on his mind. He passed right by as if I wasn’t there.”

“Did he limp when he passed by you?” Reynolds asks.

“Limp? No.”

Reynolds pulls back the body’s left sleeve, glancing at the tattoo on his wrist.