My name is Samuel. Or was it Sam? Sammy?
Let’s go with the second one. My mind’s too far gone to remember details like these anyway.
I remember the first time I transformed. I was thirteen. I fell asleep like every other day, and when I woke up, I was a squirrel. I can’t remember what time it was exactly, but somewhere between midnight and four in the morning.
How do I describe what I felt? How does one describe having their entire life break down around them? Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but I’d always been a rationalist. Everything could be explained by science. Magic was a fable, a bedtime story told to kids who still believed the world was their playground.
Except this story was real. And it was happening, to me.
I was horrified. Imagine waking up, looking in the mirror through bleary, sleep-laden eyes, and then jolting awake to the realization that you have fur. Lots and lots of fur. Two large, beaver teeth. And a tail.
God, I hated that tail. The movement was difficult enough. Having a tail just made balancing worse.
But enough about the past. Seeing as I probably won’t live long enough to have a future, let’s talk about the present. My present, to be exact. My horrible, gruesome, terrifying, and doomed present that I’m only writing about to avoid falling asleep.
Years passed, but I kept transforming. One thing I learned quick was that once you get used to it, it’s kind of fun. Don’t get me wrong, I know that sleeping peacefully is its own special brand of enjoyment, but it wasn’t a brand I particularly liked.
My gift was a blessing, and I used it to full effect. Spying on people, gathering all the information I could. Learning just the right buttons to press, the right words to say. I rose up in my career, not enough to attract suspicion, but enough to get by.
Soon I had enough cash to buy a small house somewhere in the middle of nowhere, secluded enough for a giraffe to move with ease. There was a nice spot where I kept a bowl of water, complete with some cool toys and plants, just in case I needed to heed the call of nature.
Don’t laugh. We’ll see how you like it when you’re struggling to breathe through your gills.
Where was I?
Oh yeah. My ultimate destruction. Well…here we go.
It’d become a bit of a ritual for me at this point. Get up at around midnight or something, and look in the mirror. So that’s what I did. So far, I still can’t completely understand what I saw. I was a shadow.
All the light had been sucked out of the mist I used to call my body. It rolled and twisted and whirled like some unknown matter. The world around me had turned dark, as if someone had turned out all the lights except for the two bony-white orbs that I called my eyes.
I moved a few of my fingers. Well, I call them fingers, at least. My body, despite having turned into a mass of writhing black mist, still had some approximation of a humanoid shape. Whether that was something to be relieved about was yet to be seen.
Cold wind sped past me. A breeze that chilled me to the bone. The kind a hanged corpse would dance to as it hung by its fraying rope. One that spoke in whispers and hushed warnings, as if alerting me to the presence of something I could not see.
Unsettled, I reached for my clothes, but my hand moved through them like a shadow through flesh. I tried again, my ghostly fingers dividing into tendrils of blackness as I moved through the fabric. I sighed in frustration, lifting my head up to look around the rest of the room.
My blood, if I still had it, ran cold.
What I saw that day is something that has taken me ages to understand.
Light bent around it as if it was unable to bear its touch. Objects seemed to shiver as it passed them, some falling to the floor as if attempting to run. It didn’t matter. A chill ran down my spine, as if someone had stripped me down and drowned me in frozen water.
The tendrils of darkness that made up my skin stopped moving. For one twisted, final moment, all of time stood still. We stared at each other, locked in a contest that neither was willing to lose. It was only when I turned away, for a second, that it attacked.
I ran, moving through walls and doors as it followed me, screeching words that would have forced me to my knees if I had them. Mirrors shone viciously as I moved through the house, each a reminder of the abomination I had become.
I continued my rampant escape. The thing behind me would not stop, but I did. I crashed into the walls of my house, watching in horror as the thing ran up behind me. It gripped my head, fingers digging into the mist as I screamed.
I will never see light again. I will never see again, in fact.
When I awoke, my mind was gone. Leaving only fragments of my soul in its wake. I don’t know who found me. Someone did though. A friend? I don’t have any friends. But someone told the police where I was.
I tried to tell them. Tried to tell them everything. No one believes me.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything. The doctors say I’ll die if I don’t sleep soon. My parents… don’t know me anymore. I have become something that they cannot understand. Or so they say. And that’s the worst part. Knowing that once upon a time, I could have been anything I wanted. Anyone I wanted.
Now I lay here, knowing full well that if I ever look into the mirror again, I would not recognize what I have become. Because I am nothing. Just a void mass as frail and shapeless as a shadow. Because that’s what I am. A shadow of the thing I once was. And that, is the true horror.