-Chapter III-
Becoming a Monster
I wake up to find myself curled up on the cold concrete floor of our basement. Despite all the effort I went through yesterday to get home, back to the warm embrace of my bed, I ended up falling asleep on the floor.
I’m cold…
The fire I had lit in the burner has gone out and is little more than embers. I need to get up and add some fuel, but I refuse to budge from my spot curled up on the floor.
There’s a lot of things that I need to do, but I simply can’t find the motivation to get up. Life was already shit as it was, what with it being the apocalypse and everything. But at the very least I had my family with me.
This isn’t even my first near death experience, but this is the closest that I’ve come to dying. After somehow managing to survive, I come home only to find that everyone else is gone. The cherry on the shit cake is that I am infected by some mystery disease.
Is it going to kill me? I have no fucking idea. All I do know is that even now, my arm hasn’t stopped burning with pain.
Curling up tighter, I try to will myself into just blocking out everything. To force my mind to ignore the pain. To maybe somehow lull myself back into a deep slumber.
It doesn’t work.
I lay there stewing in my own suffering. Trying to ignore my discomfort until my body decides that enough is enough and sends the universal signal that it is time to get up.
“I gotta pee……”
…….
….
“Fine gods damn it, I’ll get up.”
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“Hah…”
Having finished my business, I find myself standing in front of the mirror. The girl in the mirror is not looking so good, in fact, I would even say that she looks like shit.
Covered in dried blood and other filth, hair an unruly and ratted mess, and clothes that look like they were pulled out of a war zone. With my exhausted and disheveled appearance, I honestly look like a corpse that decided to pull itself out of the ground.
I would kill for a hot shower right now. Hah, guess I’ll go grab the bucket.
If I want to get cleaned up, I’ll have to wipe myself down with a sponge and use some of the purified rainwater we have up stares. Fetching a change of clothes, a brush and some other selfcare items which I stuff in my bag, I return upstairs to get myself cleaned up.
Filling a bucket with fresh water, I bring everything into the bathroom on the main floor. We kept this bathroom clean and prepared for washing ourselves.
Hauling the bucket into the shower, I drop off my bag on the floor and get to work on stripping out my ruined clothes. It’s an entirely unpleasant experience to say the least. Sticking to me like a second layer of skin, and the smell of my shirt as I pulled it over my head. It was like sticking my head in a gym bag full of sweaty clothes that had been left to marinate in their own filth. By the time I finally wretch it from my body I’m gasping for fresh air.
It smells like I died in there! How the hell did I sleep wearing all of this?!
Finally freed from my bondage, I’m left with a pile of filth on the floor. I can’t even call the mess on the floor clothing anymore. I decide on the spot that I’m burning all of it after I’m done. The only parts that I’m willing to try and salvage are my underwear, and that is only because I only have so many pairs left.
With that torture completed, I move into the shower and sit down on the stool to clean myself. My left arm hangs limply by my side, I hadn’t bothered to rewrap it.
It ends up taking a total of three buckets for me to get myself cleaned. The amount of filth that I managed to scrub off my body- and oh gods my hair- was absolutely disgusting. I’m honestly surprised that I didn’t manage to clog the drain with it all.
Eventually I find myself standing in front of the mirror again. Shivering in the cold while I dry myself off. I can’t help but look at my reflection in the mirror.
Standing six feet tall with brown shoulder length hair and tired green eyes. My body certainly isn’t that of a super model, but I wouldn't say it’s not nice looking. And my face is alright, I guess? My chest is about mid-sized, but I wish it was smaller. In fact, I wish that everything about me was smaller.
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I’ve never liked how tall I am, always taller than all the other girls at school and even a lot of the guys. I always find myself wishing that I was small and cute.
“Hah…” While looking at myself, I can’t help but sigh as my eyes drift over my arm. The grey had spread even further up my arm while I was sleeping. At the rate it is going, it should hit my shoulder by tomorrow.
I still can’t properly move the arm as it just hangs there uselessly. I hadn’t bothered to bandage it as the wounds are already healed, but I should have put it in a sling at the very least. I just simply wasn’t in the right state of mind to do so earlier. Hell, I’m honestly still not.
The grey surprisingly seems to be taking its time with my fingers. With how fast it had spread through the rest of my arm, I figured that it would have already covered my whole hand by now. Weird, but there’s honestly nothing I can do but watch it do its thing.
Getting dressed into some fresh clothes, I head back downstairs, locking the door behind me, and spend the rest of my day sitting by the heater and resting. That night, I finally get to sleep in my bed. It’s while I’m lying there trying to fall asleep that I realize just how close I came to ruining my sheets.
If I had slept in my bed yesterday rather than on the floor, my poor sheets could have potentially ended up joining my clothes in the burner.
Shuddering about useless thoughts and clutching my left arm to chest, I finally drift off to sleep.
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Waking up to pain seems to be becoming the new norm as of late. The first thing I notice as I wake up is that the pain in my hand has skyrocketed.
Throwing off my sheets, I pull up my arm so I can see it. It’s not a pleasant sight as all the skin on my hand has finished turning grey and my nails are not looking good. The end of each of my digits is bleeding, with the base of my fingernails looking as if rot has set in.
“What the hell is happening to my hand? Oh gods, oh gods, what I am supposed to do? Fucking hell, why does it hurt so bad?!”
Cursing and trying to keep myself from having another panic attack, I try to sit up and get out of bed. Just trying to lift my body causes me to become lightheaded and I must immediately lie back down.
“Fucking hell, it’s just getting worse.” I say to myself. Setting aside my arm for now I lean over from where I am laying and grab a towel that I had left lying next to my bed. Using it I try to clean away some of the blood pouring from my fingers.
Beneath the blood I find that the tips of my fingers have spit open under my nails. Looking through the whites of my fingernails I can see black peeking through.
Enduring the pain as best as I can, I poke at one of the rotting nails and must suppress a cry as it moves from my touch. Sliding to the side as if barely held by the flesh of my fingers.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! My nails are falling out. What the hell!?” I say, as I try to get my shaking under control.
With equal parts fear and morbid fascination, I slowly reach out and grab ahold of the fingernail on my left index finger. Pulling on it, I can’t help but shudder as it slides out from my flesh. The base of the nail, now free, is discolored and yellow and coated in fresh blood.
Hands shaking, I drop the desiccated nail on my blooded towel. Turning my attention back to the finger, I see the black object that had been hiding beneath. It’s moving. Growing outward to replace the nail that used to reside above it.
Seeing this, I can’t help but think to myself. What the hell? Am I growing new nails or something?
If I really am growing in new nails, then I don’t want the old ones getting stuck in the way…
...
Resolving myself to this gruesome task, I work on pulling the remaining four nails from my fingers. By the time I am finished I am reduced to a pale and shaking mess of cold sweat. Both of my hands are now covered in blood, and I have to wipe them clean again to see my work.
I just pulled my nails out…
That’s definitely not something I ever thought I would have to do. But at least the pain seems to be dying down some. I think to myself as continue to observe my hand. The new nails are pushing themselves forward at a speed fast enough to be seen.
It’s not long until the tip of the first nail is poking out of my index finger. Ebony black and pointed at the tip, dripping with my own blood. I watch as the nail, no, the claw continues to grow from my finger and occupy the newly vacated spot.
The other claws quickly follow their sibling, spouting out of my fingers like demonic bamboo shoots.
Seeing this I can’t help but exclaim, “Holy shit, I’m mutating. I’m not infected with some sickness, I’m fucking mutating! Just like the dogs and the other animals. I didn’t know that it could happen to humans too. I figured it was just like super rabies or something!”
I can’t take my eyes off my hand as the claws continue to extract themselves from my fingertips. They continue to grow outward until they each stand at about an inch and a half in length. Curved and pointed with a sharpened tip, they are a deep ebony black that seem to reject the light coming from my bedside lantern.
I can’t help but stare at them, watching in fascination as the surrounding grey skin of my fingers heal around the new claws. Within moments my fingers look as if they had never even been injured. Healthy[?] grey skin now surrounds the claws, cradling them as if they had always been there.
I continue to lie there, just staring at my new hand for several minutes. My new mutated hand. My new mutated hand that is attached to my mutating arm. Which is going to spread to the rest of my body...
Like ice running through my veins, I wake from my stupor.
“I’m mutating. What’s going to happen to me? Am I going to turn into some raging monster just like all those other mutated creatures?”
As far as Lain knows, mutated creatures are without exception, giant and perpetually pissed off monstrosities that are always hungry. Will she change to become some man-eating creature. Standing three meters tall and hunting the other survivors alongside the other nightmares of the night?
These thoughts and more fill her head as she sluggishly goes through her day. As the hours draw by, it becomes harder to think as her mind becomes muddled and the pain radiating from her left arm continues to spread. Growing out from her shoulder and into her chest.
Lying in bed as night draws near, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, Lain pulls down the collar of her shirt to look at her chest. The grey has spread, having grown outward from her injured arm, it has finally reached her chest. It has reached her heart.
Dropping her head back onto her pillow, she sends out a silent prayer to anyone who will listen.
Please, don’t let me turn into a monster.
Darkness takes her as Lain’s mind slips into unconsciousness. The only thing going through her mind is the sound of her own beating heart as the changes continue to rampage uncontested though her body.