Page 11 of Currents of Desire

I throw my head back, my mouth opening in a silent scream. To vocalize is to invite death. Even in agony, the instinct to remain silent holds, but the pain is a white-hot lance driving through my pelvis. My tail’s fused bone structure and the solid, powerful rod that drives me through the ocean is shattering.

Snap. Crunch.

The sound is deafening in the tiled acoustic chamber. My tail thrashes uncontrollably, splashing water onto the floor, soaking the bathmat. The beautiful, iridescent scales that armor my lower half begin to feel tight, like a skin that has shrunk in the sun. They pull. They tear.

The door flies open.

Jack stands there.

The light from the hallway spills in, silhouetting him. He holds a weapon, a heavy, metal object, raised and ready.

He heard the thrashing.

He thinks I am attacking.

He freezes.

I cannot look at him. The restructuring of my architecture consumes me.

My tail is splitting.

It starts at the fluke, the wide, translucent fan tearing down the center seam. The membrane dissolves, retracting into the flesh, leaving behind two distinct, raw limbs. The split races upward, unzipping the muscle, cleaving the meat of my tail in two.. It is the sensation of being torn apart by a shark, but from the inside out.

I grunt, a guttural, wet sound that bubbles up from my chest. My hands grip the edges of the tub, my claws gouging deep scratches into the porcelain, so much so that my knuckles turn white.

Jack lowers the weapon. His face is drained of blood, pale as the belly of a dead fish. His eyes are wide, locked on the violence of my transformation. He looks horrified, almost repulsed, but he does not look away. He is caught in the spectacle, witnessing biology that should not exist in his world.

“God…” he whispers. The word is a breath, a prayer to a deity that has no power here.

Another crack, louder this time. My knees. The joints are forming, popping into existence where there was once only smooth, flexible cartilage. The sensation of bones grinding together, reshaping, and locking into new sockets makes my vision swim with black spots.

The scales are receding. They do not fall off but dissolve. They sink back into my skin like a tide going out, absorbed by the hungry cells beneath. The hard, armored exterior softens, turning pliable and smooth. The dark teal and midnight blue of my hunter’s hide fade, bleaching out into a pale, opalescent gray-pink that mimics the soft flesh of the land walkers.

I convulse, my body arching violently in the water. The tub is too small for this, and I am thrashing against the sides, bruising my new, tender skin.

The gills.

The slits on my neck flutter wildly, desperate for oxygen that is no longer sufficient. They begin to seal. The delicate filaments dry out, fuse together, and the skin grows over them in seconds. I start to suffocate. My lungs, dormant and compressed, suddenly expand, forcing my ribcage outward with a terrifying pop.

I heave in a breath of air. It burns. It tastes of dust and chemicals, but it rushes into my new chest, filling the expanded cavity. I cough, expelling the last of the water from my bronchial tubes.

The violence subsides as quickly as it began. The fever breaks, leaving me shivering and cold.

The water in the tub has drained away, displaced by my thrashing or perhaps leaked out through a cracked seal. I am lying in the empty porcelain basin, curled in a fetal ball, where I look down at myself.

The tail is gone. In its place are two long, pale limbs. Legs. They are strange, alien things, ending in feet that look too small to support my weight. My toes are long, the webbing between them translucent and thin, barely there.

My skin is no longer armored. It is soft and vulnerable, but it retains a memory of what it was. A shimmer coats me, an oily, iridescent sheen that catches the hallway light. When I move, rainbows of oil-slick color dance across my thighs and stomach.

I am completely exposed. I have no shell. No scales. No slime coat. I am naked in the truest sense of the word, stripped of every defense mechanism I possess.

Jack takes a step into the room. He is breathing hard, as if he were the one who just rearranged his skeleton. The man stares at me, his gaze traveling from my face down to the new legs, then back up. He looks terrified.

“You…” he starts, but his voice fails him.

The first attempt to rise ends in a hard scrape against the floor. The body is completely wrong. My center of gravity has shifted entirely. I am now top-heavy and unmoored, and my new joints pop.

As my heart rate spikes with the exertion, the light comes.