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11.

    At some point, the pain stopped. Shortly after, Dani became aware of her surroundings. The cold tile floor felt nice against her curled up body. She stretched and stood up. The kitchen seemed off, but she couldn’t place it. The fruit Roxy left there was covered in mold.

    How long has it been? Dani walked over to the bathroom. Her eyes lined up with the top of the door frame.

    No way I’m that tall.

    She tried to enter but struggled to fit through the door. Instead of lingering on it, she turned towards the full-length mirror. Careful to not look down at her body, Dani stepped over the chunks of what remained of her couch. The living room was destroyed. Large, horrific marks were carved into the floor. Decayed maroon plant matter stained every surface. A strange, large piece of what looked like plastic lay crumpled in the corner. Sensations from the last few days flashed in her mind faster than she could stamp them out. Hydration poured into her body as she sucked liquid from a blanket of skin. Upholstery, wood, and leather ripped like paper. Electricity cackled from nerves coming online just in time to feel the satisfying pop of areas her body shouldn’t extend to.

    Dani stepped in front of the mirror. What looked back was not Dani. A creature towered in front of her, standing like a cobra about to strike. Its long snakelike body was covered in various shades of segmented crimson armor. The dull light that shined off it reminded her of chitin. Dani knew a creature this large would be crushed under the weight of such a heavy biological material. Invertebrates couldn’t grow this big. Yet, it stood before her – dozens of sharp, black and red segmented limbs jutted out from the sides of its body. Some rested on the floor as legs, others hung at its sides like arms.

    She traced the details of this body. A limp leg on the left side looked more like a bloody strip of arm flesh with a single human finger dangling at the end. A patch of torn skin clung to the underside of its belly. A single two-toed foot was skewered by one of the lower legs. Then she looked at its face. Its eyes were large and red, but they were held in the sockets of a vaguely human face — her face. It was stretched and contorted into a beak. Holes in her skin flesh revealed more of her shiny red exoskeleton. Two incomprehensible, serrated appendages jutted out of her mouth. The adrenaline inside her crystalized into vindictive satisfaction as Dani accepted that what stood before her was her new reflection.

    I knew it. I knew I wasn’t crazy. The body surrounding her shivered with contentment.

    BEAUTIFUL. That thought wasn’t hers. It sounded like a chorus of voices, and seemed to emerge not from her head, but from her legs. She looked down at tangled web of red veins she was standing on.

    The door down the hallway slammed shut followed by a muffled, familiar voice. “What the…had a whole week…you have to be out...deposit…” The voice grew closer and Dani turned to face it. Cursing, Roxy appeared in the entry way to their old living room.

    “Dani, you have to-“ Her voice caught in her throat as they made eye contact.

    They stayed like that for a while, staring at each other. Dani moved towards her. Roxy backed up, never breaking eye contact with her now much taller ex-girlfriend. Missing the exit, Roxy slid down wall where her bookshelves used to be and came to rest in the same spot she left Dani a week ago. Roxy’s blank, slack-jawed stare dredged up a memory from Dani’s fragmented mind. Laying together in Dani’s old dorm room, she caressed Roxy’s long black hair while looking down at her. Roxy opened her eyes and looked up with a gentle, loving expression that morphed into frustration. Whatever Dani’s expression was, it had given away her wish to be the one looking up. The memory made her recoil away from Roxy’s catatonic body. Drool pooled at the sides of Roxy’s mouth and mixed with tears that dripped from the reddening vessels of her eyes. The now wide-open canal of Dani’s old mind let in something else before she could stop it.

    “If you’re not even going to try to look or act like a woman, how do you expect anyone to believe you? It doesn’t even sound like you believe it! I can’t watch you continue to make a fool of yourself!” Her mom spit at her between sobs. Dani winced at her furious glare surrounded by black mascara that ran down from her blood-shot eyes. It was the first time she had ever seen her mom cry.

    The web of lichenous veins pouring in through the living room window transmitted an electrical chatter up Dani’s back legs. The blood red exoskeleton that covered her elegant nine foot long back shuddered. Another set of legs detached from the plate of chitin closest to her neck. No, not legs. Fangs. Her instincts called her to follow the trail of blood. Before she did so, Dani summoned up the meanest glare she could muster and tried to share the revelations from her week alone. Out of her mouth did not come her voice. The room was instead filled with her fluttering, resonate chittering. Dani stared in the mirror at the reflection of her big, dumb eyes. They could not display emotions that a human would understand. There wasn’t an answer she could forgive, anyways. Dani slid out the window to follow the trail of red, bloody lichen.

    A crisscross of veins led deep into the woods. The trunks of every tree were dotted with tiny, red fungal bulbs. Most of the leaves had finished falling, dampening the clattering sound of Dani’s claw-like legs. She traversed the forest with a speed she couldn't believe, quickly finding herself in her favorite clearing. With her powerful new fangs and front limbs, Dani removed the boulder. The strange hole underneath was larger now, but not yet big enough to fit her enormous frame. She began to dig. Within seconds, the entirety of her body had descended into the earth. The network of bloody tendrils spilled into a tunnel. Her body could smell that it ran for hundreds of miles.

    LOOK AT YOU. A deafening chorus injected into her mind the second her legs touched the knots of coagulated blood that covered every surface.

    She let out a deep clattering sound as her armor plating vibrated with delight and then set off in the direction of the voices. The way her new body moved through this subterranean highway reminded her of roller skating down the hill by her childhood home. Her powerful legs propelled her like fluid. The tunnel opened to an enormous cavern, and she instinctively shifted direction to crawl down its walls. Even in the pitch black, she could see the undulating mass of sisters filling every nook of this nest. She spilled into them, embraced by blood and chitin. The thrill of being touched again radiated up and down her body.

    Mindlessly, she followed her new senses into the mass. Millions of red, pointed appendages brushed along her new body. In the center, she found that which called most strongly to her – the curled form of a sister, about a head segment smaller than her. It uncoiled and, as they wrapped around each other, a wave of familiarity filled the last nooks of what remained of Dani's human mind. One last thought graced it before she let herself become too different to hold on to such things.

     YOU ARE LIKE ME.

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