PMD: Crux of the Self

Not-Food

The sound of rain pattering against a tent. Memories? Mine? The taste of store brand birthday cake frosting. This isn't my bed. The feel of Jake's stubble against his cheek. Headlights on a dusty windshield. Where am I?

Von dared to crack his eyes open. Sunlight drifted through an overcast sky. Groggily, he allowed himself to feel. Sand against his cheek, his belly, his hands. He didn't move as he took stock. He didn't remember passing out naked on a beach. He allowed himself to lift his head, to take in his surroundings. Instinctively, he tried to do so by propping himself up on one elbow, but nothing moved right. His arms were too short. His spine wanted to stay horizontal. Confused, he rolled onto his side, and looked down at himself, and balked, frozen in place as he took in what he saw.

Somehow, Von had become a lizard. As he tested his new muscles, swaying his tail and flexing his claws, he tried to remain calm as he processed the sight of himself. Black and gray skin, a red-orange line scrawling from his lower back down his tail. He righted himself again, back onto his belly, against the warm sand. A dream, he told himself, as he began to walk, slowly at first, to get used to his new movements. It was the only explanation, after all.

As Devon Stafford awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, Von humored himself, he found himself transformed on the beach into a small reptile. He walked aimlessly letting his tail drag through the soft sand. It felt nice against his skin, different than he remembered beach sand feeling, but the last time he felt that was years and years ago, when he was still on good terms with his family in Oregon. It would feel different, wouldn't it? He stopped walking and scraped his claws through sand. He focused on the feeling, on how material it felt. How vivid his surroundings were- the sound of the ebbing tide, the smell of seafoam and surf, the dulled irritation of grains of sand that clung to his claws when he pulled them from the dune.

This has to be a dream, Von insisted, despite his new reality. He squeezed his eyes shut, and pinched himself on his new tail. He felt the pain. He opened his eyes again, and looked skyward, to the sunlight, until the sting drove him to cast his gaze downward once more, to the material reality of the beach he stood on. What? He fell asleep in his car, in a parking lot in Whitefish, in the decidedly landlocked state of Montana. Where?

Lacking the tools to comprehend what had happened to him, and how he wound up by the ocean, what could he do but walk? He continued onward in the direction he had started. It was a coastline, sooner or later he would come across civilization, and he could puzzle out where he was. Though, I would scare people, looking like this, he thought, and after contemplating the impact of his new appearance, new factors played out in his head. He looked skyward again, scanning for wildlife, now half expecting a hawk to swoop down and snatch him up by his tail. Hawks eat lizards, right? The idea occurred to him that he should dart off of the beach, and into the treeline that followed the coast, but the thought of running into a coyote amid the trees dissuaded him further. He compromised by sticking to the driftwood- there was plenty of it, sun-bleached flotsam piled together in the sand, hollowed-out logs large enough for him to dart into should he spot the shadow of a bird circling overhead. Am I overreacting? He wondered, I'm on the larger side of the lizard spectrum. No Gila monster, but I'm no skink either. From snout to tailtip, he was about two and a half feet long. A newfound fear of predators helped take his mind of of his more existentialist dread. It let him focus, instead of mope his way down the beach, and it let his inner monologue quiet down. He funneled his energy into relearning how to walk, how to use his tail for balance, how to grip driftwood with his new claws.

After twenty minutes of walking, Von felt renewed. The coastal air felt clean in his lungs. His spirits had lifted, and were he still in his old body, he might not have minded the sudden change of location at all. The white sand, the clear blue ocean, it all felt so picturesque. This is far too gorgeous to still be in the States, he thought. Then, off to his right, in the shallows of the tide, he spotted the movement he had feared, of a bird swooping down to feed. It happened before he could do more than turn his head- a sudden thunderous splash in the water. He froze, mid step, as he witnessed a bird gulp down a fish. Some sort of waterfowl- he couldn't place the species. It was large, covered in blue feathers, a vacant and distant look in its large green eyes. It must have sensed him staring. It turned to look back at him. He was paralyzed with fear, certain that if he moved, he'd provoke it.