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Until the End of Summer

The air in the mall was a crisp twenty-seven degrees, the irises on the windows all closed to allow in just enough light to make the concourse flare into a brilliant ladder of glass and tile. Dane leaned against the railing, watching Paula as her eyes followed a family riding the escalators up towards the floors above, the canned, lightly symphonic music backing their ascent like an angelic choir.

"We could wait for a few more weeks." Paula tapped her sandal against the burnished metal bars of the guard rail. Her floral print sundress lit up in the calculated brightness of the mall, her nearly shoulder length hair flowing like wheat on a breezy day.

She'd worked so hard to grow it out since last year.

"Honey, it's already fifty-five out there . . ." Dane squinted up at the pinhole windows and sighed. His clothes were almost completely utilitarian: baggy sand colored nylon pants and an equally form obscuring ashy long-sleeved shirt. The only thing remarkable about his get up was his black leather shoes, cleaned and polished to a mirror finish.

"It's not really dangerous until it gets to sixty though, right?" She asked hopefully, leaning over the rail to look down at the fountain gurgling in the middle of the central plaza.

Dane rubbed his cleanshaven face between his hands for a moment, considering his answer. "That's when they say it becomes dangerous."

"Right. So until then, we could just spend more time here. You work from home, so . . ." Her green eyes followed an overweight man as he daintily nibbled at his gelato with a small pink plastic spoon.

"But we can't live_here, Paula. You know we can barely afford to _buy anything here." He winced as he saw Paula's eyes screw shut, the faint sheen of her sadness leaking through and glinting in the bright light.

"Is it really that bad? I mean, we'll be back to normal before you know it."

"It's four months, Dane," Paula sighed, her voice quavering. "Four months where we can't come back here . . ." She waved her hand around at the beautiful antiseptically clean shopping center with its designer clothes and gourmet food. "Four months where I don't even get to be myself . . ."

"There's other malls though. And theaters. Even the art museum . . . when it's not a weekend." Dane wrapped his hand around her back reassuringly. "And you know I'll always love you just as much."

Paula turned to give him a look that made the cool air feel almost frosty. "It's not natural." She turned back down and watched as people went about their normal human lives.

"I suppose that's true . . ." Dane considered his words carefully. "But almost everyone else does it now: seventy percent. It would be weirder if we didn't, really."

"It's just not fair. Why don't they have to make the change?" Her expression turned to a sneer as a woman walked by with a conspicuous fur shawl. It would probably spontaneously combust if the woman ever had to take a step outside in her clopping stiletto heels.

"They're rich, and we're . . . just normal. You know that we only get cooling subsidized at twenty under the current temperature. If we had to pay for the whole air system by ourselves . . . we wouldn't be able to eat . . ." He brushed his fingers through his hair as he laughed self-consciously. Paula avoided his gaze, staring up at the gaudy decadence of the escalators that continued to ferry consumers towards the heavens. "Come on, we can go have a nice dinner somewhere with a patio afterwards. Don't you miss sitting outside?"

"No," Paula declared. "I miss living in a place that isn't going to kill me." She fidgeted, sticking her sandal between the bars of the railing. "Couldn't we move north?"

"You know I have to stay here for meetings. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity," Dane protested. "I doubt anyone else would hire me anyways. It's getting harder and harder to find a real job these days . . ."

Far down below they watched a man drag a screaming child behind him, a crisp shopping bag clenched in his other hand as he cradled his phone against his shoulder. "And anyways, have you seen how much it costs to live in a place like Alaska now? And that's even ignoring all the flooding . . ."

Paula paused, letting the sounds of the mall fill the silence in their conversation. "Could we just wait a bit longer then?" She turned her gaze towards Dane, eyes pleading.

Dane sighed, seeming to deflate as he leaned back against the railing. "How long?"

"Not long . . . Just enough time to enjoy ourselves." She turned to face him expectantly.

"A day?" he asked, trying to keep his tone as gentle as he could.

Her expression sank like he'd dumped a bucket of lukewarm water over her.

"A week?"

Paula's eyes glanced up to the synthetic heavens before she slowly nodded.

To Dane, it was the threat of another week of sweat drenched nights and the constant fear of the electric bill coming back higher than the rent; but to Paula, it meant another week of staying human.

They tried to make the most of it, taking late night strolls on the balmy banks of the river, watching movies in the nice theaters, and even eating at one of the fancy restaurants where they kept the whole place dim and inhospitably cold. Through it all, Dane felt guilty, looking out the car window and seeing slitted eyes watching him accusingly. Pamela deflected the attention, instead looking inwards and steeping in the privilege of her humanity.

The week passed in an instant and an eternity.

Neither of them spoke during the drive to the clinic. The city's looming buildings offered momentary respites from the streaking lances of the morning sun. Although still cleanshaven, Dane had rings under his eyes, and despite his cooling morning shower, he still felt the clammy sheen of sweat against his skin. Pamela hid the strain much better, her fatigue concealed behind powders and foundation. Even the finest cremes couldn't cover up her disappointment though, as they parked in the scorching lot and then hurried towards the imposing government building.

The heat radiated up from the asphalt, a tangible oppressive force.

After confirming their reservations and having the initial labs done, the process was painless. Dane squeezed Paula's hand before they were both led by their nurses to separate identical doors along the identical unending hallways. The initial injection always made it hard to remember exactly how it happened: thoughts and senses blending together into a surreal tapestry.

Pamela remembered the antiseptic smell as the too-large clear plastic mask was secured around her face. Uncaring hands secured her torso and wrists before the clear tube rose up and the thick fluid seeped up from under her.

To Dane, that was always the worst part. The strange thick water was always too cold. Bracing himself for it was like wincing before jumping into a cool stream, but in much the same fashion, it wasn't nearly as bad once he had taken the plunge. The bubbles streaming up through the glass cylinder around him made it hard to see, even as he opened his eyes, blinking against the liquid as he watched the silvery shapes drift up towards the crisp white florescent lights.

Preferring to keep her eyes shut, Pamela balled her hands into fists, shaking against the restraints until she could feel her nails pressing against her palms. She then tried to spread her fingers wide and ignore the pressured twinges that started curling the tips into dark claws. Her perfectly human skin twitched and tightened, itching as creases formed and tan scales peppered with brown splotches slowly slid in link by link along her body.

Tan was the color that seemed most human.

Dane couldn't help but stifle a giggle as he realized that he could now lick the far end of his mask, his fleshy tongue swelling as his face strained out, grey scales prickling in along his lips. He knew that he wasn't technically getting bigger or smaller, but it always felt like he was growing, like a cheap monster from science fiction. There was also the burgeoning sense of something swelling inside of him, but like always, by the time he looked down there was nothing to see except smooth scales.

Paula associated the gurgling sound of the bubbles creeping up along her cracking skin with drowning. Every time she came here it was like being offered up as a sacrifice to some inhuman technological god. She was glad the rising pockets of air made it hard to see how her body was twisting while the cool water grew warmer around her. And yet even she couldn't deny that the heat felt good, life seeping into her chilled limbs as the transformation neared its inevitable end.

After the water gurgled away, red buzzing heat lamps flickered on, and they both laid back in silence as their scales hardened. Nurses and doctors billowed in and out of the room, asking rhetorical questions that the patients could only groggily respond to.

Once the final checks were done, they were both dressed and ushered back into the lobby. Dane's saurian complexion split into a grin as he saw Pamela and enveloped her in a deep hug. They didn't say anything for the first few moments, just squeezing each other with a newfound appreciation for their warmth in the chill of the government building.

Yet even as they embraced, Pamela's now coppery eyes started to water. Her sundress was loose around her chest and hung strangely on her reptilian frame. Her long lizard-like toes braced against the linoleum, her now ill-fitting sandals stashed in her purse. She pressed her bald head into the crook of Dane's shoulder, tears beading as they rolled down her sandy desert-colored scales.

"There there." He patted her shoulder, swaying slowly. People around the lobby were staring, but he didn't pay them any mind, clawed hand wrapped around the back of her head as he cooed, letting her sobs slowly die down.

Though he sported claws and a reptilian snout, Dane looked much the same as he had before, plain clothes still draped over his thin frame, though he lacked the polished distinction of his shoes.

"It's just until the end of summer."

Their bodies drank in the heat as they walked back across the great asphalt oven of the parking lot. Dane basked in the glow of the comfort, sixty-one degrees feeling pleasantly warm. He had to turn off the AC in the car with a shiver when it started up.

The brief flutter of cold air played over Pamela's ruined scaly skin as she stared out the window, the city starting to zoom by. While Dane watched the reptilian figures picnicking in the park with a smile, all she could see was the shopping center behind it: a world now closed to her.

Raising her hand up to the clear surface of the window, she frowned as her claws clicked against the glass, screeching as she clenched her fingers into a tight fist.

Dane was speaking, but she couldn't hear his words. All Paula could hear were the whispers of those they drove past: their hushed mocking conversations about her deplorable inhumanity.

The summer opened up to Dane as it closed in around Paula, the sweltering air between them a widening chasm of silence.