Elise Quartermaine's page

Real name: Ellen Scott. Ellen was a middle-aged housewife with two kids (Missy, 13; Caleb, 9) living in the suburbs when the pulse happened. For her the pulse felt like she was suddenly underwater, and then it stopped and she shook it off and reminded herself to get more sleep. Until the next morning when she'd suddenly grown five inches. She completely freaked out, but then by the time her husband came to check on her everything was back to normal. She yo-yo'd between short and taller for the rest of the day, and by the end of the day she was absolutely hysterical, thinking she was losing her mind. A bottle of wine and a good night's sleep later she woke up feeling better than she had in years ...until she looked in the mirror. Not only was she still taller (and thinner, which actually she didn't entirely mind), but she looked years younger and her ears....she looked like she'd just escaped from a movie set or something. And these weren't like Vulcan ears, theses were like World of Warcraft ears. Completely convinced she had totally lost her mind (there weren't any rational explanations she could think of for waking up looking like an elf) she wasn't sure what to do. And then she found the other less than pleasant surprise...as she started to wheeze, literally suffocating in air as the gills she hadn't had the night before were too dried out. After a week of hiding out at home, usually in the bathtub, trying to figure out why she'd suddenly turned into a freak show, she stumbled on a messageboard full of other people who were having the same problems as she was. A psychologist in New York who was studying this new phenomena promised her that he could help her if she came to New York, so she visited the local thrift store to buy some clothes that fit her new frame, had yet another screaming row with her freaked out spouse, said goodbye to her crying kids who didn't believe she was still herself and wanted to know what happened to mommy, packed a bag, went to the ATM and emptied out the savings account, and bought a bus ticket for New York. She always kept a hat on so people wouldn't question her ears, but then her hair started randomly changing color so now she looked like a cosplaying teen who was way too into anime. At one of the stops she found a stray kitten and no matter how insane she knew it was, she just couldn't put it down, so instead ended up smuggling it on the bus with her. The hardest part of traveling was keeping her gills from drying out. At one point things got so desperate that she had to dunk her head in the toilet so she could breathe, not an experience she was anxious to repeat. And now she's finally made it to the city and is really hoping that she can find some way to make her life go back to the way it was before. Because she doesn't feel comfortable letting people know her real name since she looks so different now, she's going by the pseudonym she was using on the messageboard instead of her real name.