The first thing he noticed was the cold. A biting, wet chill that prickled against his tiny body. Tiny? That realization hit him harder than the cold, and it only got worse from there.

Something was wrong. No, everything was wrong.

His eyes fluttered open—or what he assumed were his eyes. His vision, fractured and unnatural, was split into countless tiny segments, each revealing a different part of a landscape that looked distorted, alien. He could see in every direction, but none of it made sense.

Where the hell am I?

He tried to move, to shift, but the sensation was wrong, foreign. Instead of arms or legs, there were these... stumps, multiple of them, twitching uncontrollably. He felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut, flailing without any coordination or control. The ground beneath him felt rough, damp—dirt and bits of gravel digging into him as he wriggled helplessly.

What the hell... is this a dream? It had to be, right? None of this felt real, yet it was too vivid, too detailed to be something his brain had concocted. The dampness of the earth clung to his... skin? No, this wasn’t skin. He glanced down, or at least tried to, but his new eyes didn’t work like human ones.

Instead, his vision revealed a body covered in soft, fine hairs. A body that wasn’t his. A long, squishy, segmented thing that squirmed and writhed as if it had a mind of its own.

A wave of nausea crashed over him. No. No. No.

He wasn’t seeing this. He couldn’t be seeing this. It was too absurd. He was lying in bed, or maybe passed out somewhere, hallucinating from some bad food or fever. That had to be it.

But even in this strange nightmare, the cold clung to him, real and biting. The gritty earth scraped against him. His tiny limbs—stubby, awkward—dragged him across the soil in a slow, revolting slither.

I'm... a caterpillar?

The thought shattered any remnants of calm he had left. Panic shot through him like an electric jolt, and he flailed, rolling onto his back, his body twisting and writhing. He couldn't scream, couldn't even speak, but inside his mind, the horror exploded into a cacophony of chaotic thoughts.

Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!

No matter how much he willed it, nothing changed. He remained in this bizarre form, bound to the cold, wet dirt beneath him. Everything around him was too real—the roughness of the ground, the strange sensations of his new body, the overwhelming claustrophobia of being trapped in this alien shell.

He tried to calm down, but how? How did one calm down when they weren’t even themselves anymore? He wasn’t just stuck in a dream; he was stuck as a creature. A bug. An insect.

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"Okay, breathe, just breathe..." His mind raced. Wait, do caterpillars even breathe? The question hit him like a slap to the face. He didn’t even know how to breathe anymore. He had no mouth, no nose. What did he have?

The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous it became. And yet, the more terrifying. His entire body tensed as he desperately tried to wake himself up, tried to will himself out of this nightmare, but all that came was a surge of raw panic.

He closed his eyes—whatever that even meant in this form—and focused, trying to piece together anything familiar. But his memories were a blur, flashing in fragments. Earth. His life. Walking to work. Driving. Cities. People. The clinking of cups in coffee shops. Random flashes of normality, as though his mind was mocking him. He could remember everything so vividly, except...

Who am I? The thought hit him like a brick. My name. He couldn’t remember his own name. He knew everything about his life—his friends, his apartment, his job—but his name? His identity? Gone, erased like it had never existed.

For a moment, he felt paralyzed by that alone, an existential crisis piling on top of everything else. Was he even still himself? Or was he... something new now? A nameless, mindless insect?

He writhed again, his tiny legs scraping against the ground, pulling him forward. It was instinctive, a desperate attempt to move, to feel in control, but every drag of his body only reminded him how far from human he was. His movements were sluggish, unnatural, but worst of all, they were real.

Too real.

Suddenly, something sharp scraped along his side—a jagged rock hidden in the earth. A searing pain shot through him, and he froze. Pain. Real, tangible pain. The kind of pain that made him scream if he still had a voice to scream with. But there was no sound. Only the raw sensation ripping through his soft body.

No, no, no... This wasn’t a dream. The pain, the sensations, the cold... it was all real.

His heart—did he even have a heart?—pounded in his chest, or wherever the hell it was. The world around him felt like it was closing in, becoming too big, too strange. He was trapped in the body of something small, insignificant, helpless.

I'm going to die here. The thought slithered into his mind. He was vulnerable, exposed, a tiny bug in an enormous world where anything could crush him. His body shook as he tried to figure out what to do, but nothing made sense. There was no logic in this madness.

It wasn’t just fear anymore. It was survival.

He scrambled forward, desperate for a way out. A way to escape this nightmare, but the world loomed over him. The plants—no, the grass—towered above him like trees. Leaves and dirt stretched out like an endless forest. Everything was enormous, and he was so small.

And then... a sound.

A soft rustling. Something moving nearby.

Oh no. His tiny body froze, his many eyes darting frantically, trying to find the source of the noise. His heart—whatever it was now—pounded harder, his instincts screaming at him to stay still. But he couldn’t. He had to move. He had to run, even though his body could barely manage more than a slow crawl.

The rustling grew louder, closer. His legs twitched, pulling him forward, even though he didn’t know where he was going. Fear was the only thing driving him now. He had to get away. He had to—

Then he saw it. Slithering through the grass, weaving between the towering blades, smooth and silent.

A snake.