If the feeling had a point of origin, I couldn’t tell. It spread too quickly. It was like every fiber of every muscle in my body wriggled beneath my skin. Itchy points prodded the backs of my eyes and the insides of my skull. My legs ached. The bones crinkled and groaned; my feet felt thin and brittle.

“Bathroom!” I said, loudly enough for others to hear.

I didn’t need to work to make it sound awkward. It already was.

The restrooms were down in a niche in the wall near the far end of the cafeteria’s serving counter. I ignored any lingering stares and ran for it without a moment’s hesitation.

I could have sworn something was crawling inside my eyes.

Barreling through the door, I ran down a short hallway and then dashed into the men’s room. Someone had recently sprayed things down with antiseptic cleanser. Its sweet, stinging scent clung to the air. The slamming of the door against the wall triggered a yelp of surprise from further down the room.

I wasn’t alone.

Fudge.

Looking toward the sound, I saw a guy washing his hands in one of the sinks.

I guess I wouldn’t be using the mirrors.

All the stalls were empty, their doors ajar. I darted into the nearest one, turned around, slid the lock in place, and sat down on the closed toilet lid.

Apparently, that was a bad move, because a burning pain shot up my spine the instant I sat down. Letting out a yelp, I leapt to my feet, only to be greeted by a fresh wave of pins-and-needles sweeping across my lower legs. The sensation flowed up the backs of my thighs, settling into my lumbar region.

My vision darkened. I nearly swooned with lightheadedness.

Something on my back moved.

By the Angel!

My hand flung onto my lower back. I felt flesh creeping down my spine. Or was it my spine creeping up my body?

The sudden tightness in my normally loose white doctor’s coat suggested the latter.

Crimps popped up and down my back. My collar brushed against my neck as my head pressed against the wall of the stall—but I hadn’t moved my head.

Was my neck growing longer?

Before I could even reach up to check, I was suddenly noticed a disturbance in my pants—and not in the usual place. There was something pressing against the seat of my pants, like a book plopped onto my behind. The thing curled under my bottom, passing between my legs, brushing the underside of my left thigh as it grew longer.

I looked down and squealed.

“Holy fudge!”

An object the shape and size of a fully grown carrot was pushing up against my slacks on the outer edge of my left thigh. I plastered my hand over my mouth to muffle my cry of fear.

Recoiling in horror, I staggered back, crashing into the stall’s wall, right side first, losing my footing on the tiled floor. I shot out my hand as I toppled backward, tightly squeezing the cold metal of the supporting grip built into the stall wall, stopping my fall. Had I waited a second longer to grab the support, I would have smacked the back of my neck into the porcelain toilet lid’s angular edge.

Sure, I might have felt dead, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see what breaking my neck would do to me.

The man by the sink outside the stall reacted to my yell. “Are you okay, dude?” he asked. He let out several harsh, dry coughs.

“No!” I whined. My voice echoed loudly.

Bracing myself—pressing my arms against the stall’s walls—I pulled myself upright. My loafers’ soles squeaked on the tiled floor as my chest heaved.

This can’t be happening!

Shaking my arms, I let out a wordless yell.

In all likelihood, the number of people I knew who had tails had just increased by one.

A moment later, the door swung. Open. Closed.

And the sink was still running.

I groused. “Of all the—”

Undoing the lock on the stall door, I left the stall, hobbling over to turn off the sink the man had left on.

I could deal with the sink being left on, or I could deal with having grown a tail. I could not possibly deal with both. One of them had to go.

Thankfully, I wasn’t so hopeless as to be unable to turn off a sink. Once it was off, a thought occurred to me. Walking over to console by the restroom door, I swiped my hand over the scanner and then spent a couple seconds looking over the menu screen.

There!

I entered the Settings section and tapped the Lock icon. Hidden tumblers clicked as the restroom door locked itself, which was good, because by that point, I was barely able to stand anymore. Thankfully, our restrooms had benches extruding from their walls for exactly that purpose. I sank onto the simple, white plastic bench right by the door—but carefully, making sure to put my body weight on my right thigh rather than my bottom. I sat with one leg dangling over the edge of the bench. I kept my other foot on the tiled floor, bracing myself in case anything else happened.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Not having to stand anymore was blessed relief. This was important, because it wasn’t a relief to be stuck turning into something inhuman, just as it wasn’t a relief that I might very well have five time travelers on my hands, just as it wasn’t a relief to be stuck wondering whether the world itself was losing its mind, or if it is was just me, just as it wasn’t a relief to know I’d just eaten plastic. But… sitting down and not having to worry about falling over or Angel-knows what else did feel pretty nice.

Do not look a gift horse in the mouth. Or was it gift wyrm?

I giggled manically.

Desperately.

By the Angel, I was screwed.

Hoping to calm myself, I took several deep breaths. That was a bad idea. It flooded my throat and sinuses with the fragrance of antiseptic cleanser. My everything stung—throat, nose, eyes. I gagged. My eyes watered. I was clenching my fists so tightly, my fingernails scraped along my palms. And all the while the crawling sensations continued, slowly abating. As the minutes passed, the continuous sheet of writhing sensations that covered my body broke up in space and time, leaving patches of wrongness flaring up here and there, though mostly on my back. They’d pulse with intensity, only to fade away, and then return and fade again, weaker than before, repeating again and again until the sensations finally died away.

I managed to wait all of twelve seconds—I counted—until my horrified curiosity won out. I popped open my belt buckle and undid my fly.

I guess you could say I was assessing the damage.

With much wriggling and tugging, I managed to slide my pants down about halfway toward my knees. For a moment, I thought things were going to get rather touch and go, but then, I remembered: my neck.

Swallowing—shoulders trembling—I looked over my back, turning my neck as far as it would go. I found myself staring down at the back of my shirt.

My head had turned almost all the way around.

I pressed my hand against my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t turning my shoulder or bringing it close in any way.

I wasn’t.

Oh God. Oh God.

Puffing out my chest and arching my back, I pried off my undershorts’ elastic with a jittering hand. As I stared, a nervous tingle started in my scalp. The sensation slithered down my back like a slug, further than it had ever gone before.

I had a tail. The thing twitched as the nervous tingle flowed through it. I let the elastic snap back and looked away and closed my eyes.

I rubbed my fingers on my temples, hoping it would make the situation feel a little less surreal.

It did not.

“Guh,” I groaned.

I really did have a tail now. It stuck out from behind me like a gardening trowel—short, but still long enough to curl up between my legs. From what I’d seen, it had the same color and texture as the patch of changed skin on my chest: an alien violet black—another outgrowth of the fungal contagion that had taken root inside my body. The mix of soreness and numbness that had been gradually overtaking my legs was likely what had kept me from noticing it until now. Well, either that, or it had just grown in, and that… that couldn’t be possible. Right?

I let out a soft, terrified chuckle that died in my mouth and came out as a pathetic whimper.

The scariest part? I felt fine—not counting the hunger and the deadness and the lag and existential dread that everything around me was turning into a nightmare. You would think growing a tail would be accompanied by other severe bodily dysfunctions: vomiting, coughing up blood, weeping tears of black ooze, but, no, it didn’t—not for me, anyhow.

Once more, I reached for my behind, only, this time, I didn’t turn around to look. I stuck my fingers down between my back and the elastic. My sweat-moistened shirt brushed against the back of my palm.

And then… I touched it. I touched my tail.

Flesh recognized flesh.

It was warm to the touch, which made my cold fingers’ grip quite uncomfortable. I shuddered as a shiver rollicked up my spine.

My tail was wide enough that I could only get my thumb and index-finger halfway around it in either direction. As I held it, I accidentally flexed a muscle I didn’t know I had, and the thing moved, flopping in my grip. It was a weak motion, but it was movement all the same. I could make my tail wiggle limply, and that was about it.

For now.

Curiously—eerily—I noticed the motions of my tail didn’t suffer from the lag that plagued the parts that hadn’t begun to change. And, not only that, my tail didn’t feel dead.

Gosh darn it!

The one part of my body that felt normal was the part that had no business being there!

I sighed.

Carefully, trying my best to keep my tail from wiggling too much, I used my hand to tuck my new limb down my left pant-leg. That gave it room to grow—and grow it did, as one last wave of paresthesia danced along its length. Flesh rippled beneath my palm. I had to expand my grip several times as my tail grew longer and thicker. But, soon, the pulses creeping through my body died away; apparently, my transformation had run out of fuel.

The edge my meal had taken out of my hunger crept back into me.

Eventually, the tingling, sliding, stretching sensations finally stopped. For a moment, I sat still, saying nothing, doing nothing, preparing myself to process what had just happened to me.

I tried flexing my tail again, and, once again, it responded in perfect time. Closing my eyes and squeezing my fists as I spent a couple seconds trying to wrap my tail around my leg by moving it using only my new tail muscles. I was moderately successful in my effort, which left me feeling mostly confident that I’d be able to adjust it if it popped loose. My tail wrangling practice also left my new muscles feeling sore.

As long as I was careful about how I sat down and made sure to lean to the right, my tail might not get noticed. Though, if I kept up with my food binges, I was certain my tail would be the least of my worries.

“Fricasse me…” I muttered.

I needed to fight this as much as I could, for as long as I could.

Without getting up, I patted myself down to assess if anything else had changed. Unfortunately, the answer to that question was a definite yes. The patch of dark tissue on my chest had grown, becoming like a giant scab that now covered most of my torso. My navel had joined my nipples in non-existence, smoothed over by minute scales. Pressing my fingers down against the fabric of my coat, I followed the scales across my chest patch up to where its abruptly ended at my sides.

Darn it!

These changes were more than skin deep. My shoulders had broadened a little, and my chest had deepened, turning slightly more barrel-like.

But the eeriest part had yet to come.

Just when I thought it was finally done, out of nowhere, spectral blue flames appeared, phasing through the restroom’s walls and the toilet stalls, moving toward me without smell or sound. I recognized the flames from my previous restroom panic, when I’d gotten my first glimpse of the wyrm flesh blossoming on my chest. Back then, the fires had flowed through me and encircled Andalon, and when they disappeared, some of her memories had come back to her.

Would that happen again?

They drifted toward me like moths to a lamp. Wherever the flames touched me, they flowed into my body, as if they were returning to greater fire that lived within me. It didn’t hurt, but it was definitely unnerving—though nowhere near as unnerving as the changes.

I’d take spooky blue ghost flames over body horror any day.

Speaking of which…

I was now alone in the restroom, and the locked door meant there was no chance of any unexpected guests.

The mirrors were all free.

Taking a deep breath, I carefully stood up. The soreness had passed, for now, though the front two-thirds of my feet were totally numb. I was mindful of not knocking my tail out of place as I pulled up my pants, and zipped up and buckled.

I clenched my fists as I walked over to one of the sinks. The flames followed me, moving past the mirrors and stalls like autumn leaves in a thinking wind. The flames left no reflections in the mirror.

I hadn’t the slightest clue about what any of it meant.

The flow of flames slowed to a trickle as I approached the mirror, until one last flame was left meandering through the air like a spectral butterfly. Then it merged into my chest, and everything was still.

That left was one final piece of “damage” to assess.

I bit my lip, and then looked into the mirror.