Furious and cloaked in the silvery light, I change.
With an itch that grows to a burn, coarse hairs push their way up through my skin like worms in a flooded graveyard. I dare not scratch, for unbidden keratin oozes along my fingernail until they lengthen to points.
Twin snakes of rage and terror coil around my spine, twisting it into unnatural shapes. I fall to my knees first, and then topple to my back.
Yes, there is pain, but it is subservient to my fury. I rend my clothes, and where my claws miss, the bulging of new muscle serves to part the threads.
I tremble — not a shiver of cold, despite my nakedness, but a paroxysm of rage. I curse the one that brought this affliction upon me, curse myself for succumbing, and curse the fool that fueled the flames of my fury.
At last, my change complete, I rise to hulk over the object of my ire. Bathed in the pale light, I raise one hand, claw extended like the dagger of a mad god, and bring it down.
I click “Reply to comment.” With keyboard-shredding fingertips, I type my scorn to the world.
Jack N. Waddell is a Southern writer, physicist, and educator. He and his wife live in Arkansas, where he enriches young minds, but only to reactor-grade levels. His fiction has appeared in Linguistic Erosion and Mad Scientist Journal.
