An Immortal

Lois Lane had put on coffee when she began her internet research. The baleful gravid form had seemed to watch her, with its stunted head, and Lois had pointedly ignored it, as well as the sudden ache in her breasts, the bloated stomach, the twinges of cramps in her pelvis. She sat at the computer and began her research...and the physical aches of her body faded away as she became engrossed in her work.

By the time she was finished, the coffee was cold.

A great deal of information that had once been sequestered in old newspaper archives and local libraries was now online. Lois had sifted through census data, city directories, old newspapers, even the scanned and transcribed diaries of early settlers to that colony that would one day become Metropolis. She found Angelique Blaze...and Angelica Blaze, Angie Blaze, Mme. A. Flamber...different women, at different periods, often years or decades apart, all living on or near that spot; and always associated with some unusual happening, the complaints of women in the surrounding area, sometimes a violent confrontation...yet she always returned.

The reporter frowned as she shifted two windows side-by-side. One was a gritty, poorly reproduced newspaper photograph from 1887. The other was another photograph from 1923, when a raid on a speakeasy had uncovered a den of lesbian Satanists. Though taken nearly thirty years apart, the striking features—the broad forehead, dark eyes, the wide and too-generous mouth with its cryptic half-smile—seemed to Lois Lane to be almost identical.

Then she pulled up an etching from Metropolis' brief witch scare in the 1690s. The unknown artist had captured that same damned smile. It seemed to almost leer at Lois from off the screen, and a shiver ran down the reporter's spine. It was not unlike the sensation of being watched that came from that damned statue.

Staring at the images from across the centuries, Lois felt like that detective in Highlander. Was this woman, this Blaze, really immortal? If so, where did she go, and why did she return to Metropolis? What did this statue have to do with her? Curiosity gnawed at Lois Lane, but she wasn't sure how many answers she would find here, tonight.

Lois reached for the cold cup of coffee and grimaced as she choked down a mouthful of the bitter liquid. Suddenly she felt the long hours of the night on her. She had been sitting for hours, and now her body was talking to her. With a grunt she tried to stand...

...and the curve of her bloated belly caught the edge of the table.

The reporter looked down at herself and gasped. The slightly swollen stomach had now filled her lap. Her breasts, now tender and aching, looked like half-filled balloons, the nipples dark and protuberant, and rested on the curve of her stomach. Lois grunted as a new, stronger cramp seized her pelvis, a sudden and terrible urge to push as she pushed the chair back and stood up...and from that vantage point, the curve of her protruding abdomen blocked the screen from her view.

"What the hell is going on?" Lois whispered aloud.

She did not have long to wait for an answer.