Catharsis

NINETEEN

I sense my tongue dancing, throat rumbling with the unfamiliar whimpering of a sickened animal. Images replay in my mind: claws scratching frantically at the cement floor, the feeling tingles through my fingers like nails on a chalkboard. The smell of food wafts through the room. I'm starving and pleading, but the food isn't coming. The scent bleeds through the vent. It bleeds under the door, through the window. I need to kill something, need to fuck something. I need, need, need -

What the hell is that sound? Whimpering turns to yelping. Yelping turns to howling that rips out of my lungs. As I crawl back up to the surface of my mind, it gradually shifts into a human voice: my voice moaning and sniveling pathetically.

Against the pain, I open my eyes. The scent is gone and replaced by must. Moaning quiets, leaving me with nothing but the sound of my rapid breathing. My chest heaves up and sinks down. There's just enough dim light coming through the window to show me where I am. I'm on the floor, lying on my side.

It takes a few seconds before my brain makes sense of how mangled my body is. I crack my neck over my left shoulder. My hand is raised above me, claws stuck in the wood of the door at the end of four long, bloody scratches. This isn't my body. My shoulders and my waist should be narrow, but I'm swollen and foreign. My biceps covered in thin, brown hair stretch against black shirt sleeves. The scrub pants I'm wearing should be loose and comfortable, but they're tight and constricting. Especially against my cock that's throbbing and strained, confined. I've never felt so horny in all my life. Not even for Sammy.

My muscles ache and shrink. Gradually the clothes that cling to my skin loosens until they're almost too big. The claws that have sunk into the wooden door retract and burn my fingertips in the process, releasing my hand to fall limp at my side.

I think I've turned back now. There's still the unmistakable feeling of fangs in my mouth and as I raise a trembling hand to my forehead, the tip of a claw drags up my cheek.

"Christ." I murmur to myself as I touch my left hand to my right one that feels more human. My fingers run across torn skin up my left arm and it stings.

Kaman is right. My humanity is leaving me and the clock is ticking. My only hope is that I can somehow go free and live my final few months with Sammy. Broken or not, that's all I have left to hope for. I'll have to kill myself before I fall away into a transformation that I don't wake up from.

Rolling my head back and forth on the concrete, I mutter nonsensical syllables to myself as pain explodes behind my eyes. I don't want to die, I just want my life to go back to the way it was.

"Quiet." A hushed voice meets my ears. "You're going to be okay," it assures in whispers.

As I consider whether or not I'm losing touch with reality, the door swings open, then closed. A blinding beam is turned on me. I raise my hand to shield my eyes. Kaman's giant, hulking shadow is standing in the doorway, holding a battery-powered lantern. He's exchanged his latex gloves for thick rubber ones, but he's still in his green scrubs. Only now they're smeared with my blood.

"Get up," he says, his voice like gravel. The front of his shoe jabs into my ribs. I wince and lift myself up slowly until I'm sitting and squinting in the bright light. Crouching down he sets the lantern on the floor then grabs my left hand. He forces my curled, mangled fingers to straighten. I hiss in pain. Each finger is elongated, skin like it's been stained with ink. Bloody claws. It's just like that smokey horror that haunts my dreams.

There are lesions everywhere. Some of them have split open to reveal the skin beneath: the skin of whatever it is I turn into. Aside from my black fingertips, my right hand is almost human. My nails have even grown back already.