Chapter 4: Chapter 4: There’s a Monster in the Mirror

Ian pulled up to the motel and took a deep breath before climbing out of the car. He was wearing a skirt that he had express-ordered online to hide the growing tail, as well as a large headscarf to cover the thick hair coming from his head. Everything was muted as a result but it would be worth it not to get stares from everyone.

He stepped inside and signed in under the name Eloise. The transformation hadn’t just given him inhuman features: his hips were wider and he had something of a small bust, his face was a lot rounder and there was no hint of facial hair. It would have drawn more attention, especially in a skirt, if he’d insisted on going by his real name.

Eloise felt like the right name, anyway. Ian was sure that he’d heard it somewhere recently and it had stayed with him for some reason. If he were a woman, Ian would have been an Eloise; maybe in another life.

Ian got the key to his motel room and grabbed his bags from the car, one with clothes and the other with his laptop. He kept glancing over his shoulder ever few seconds even though he was safely far away from his home. The room was on the ground floor and, for a few good minutes, Ian simply stood in front of the door and stared through it.

What if he was wrong and there was a monster inside already waiting for him? Ian knew that it was ridiculous to think as much, but his chest was tight. There was no reason to believe that anything could get to him away from his house and he had no intention of going back there anytime soon.

The little room seemed empty and innocuous enough; Ian checked the closet, then under the bed, and in the bathroom just to be safe. He locked the front door and placed the desk chair in front of it to be absolutely sure that nobody was going to get inside. That done, he sat down on the bed and pulled his legs to his chest while his tail moved sluggishly from side to side. Ian removed the headscarf to free his hearing, but picked up nothing save for the distant sounds of a busy street.

He pouted for a while before turning on the TV just for a distraction and climbing under the covers. Everything was a wreck; his whole life had been ruined and he had no idea what to do next. His laptop was in a bag sitting on the desk, though Ian wasn’t entirely sure why he’d brought it to begin with. Ian had put in for vacation before leaving the house but had no intention of going back to work. It was hard for him to make plans at all when he was losing his humanity and there was a mad god on Earth’s doorstep.

Dimly, Ian was aware that they were talking on TV about the global lights. He stuck his head out of the covers and hissed at the screen—it felt oddly natural to do—and buried his head into his pillow. It was torment to be the only person who knew that the world was about to end; his readers would be surprised, for sure, but everyone else would be completely blindsided.

Would it make a difference if he told anybody what was going to happen? Ian didn’t think so. Nobody would believe him, nobody could do anything to stop it, and nobody would be able to hide from the lady when she arrived.

He did finally come out from under the covers to grab for his laptop case. Ian puled his computer out and turned it on, tapping mindlessly at the keyboard while he waited, unsure of what he was going to write. His tail shifted underneath him, trying to get into a more comfortable position.

Ian wrote, Last night I dreamed that I was standing on the lady’s balcony, overlooking the black and blue forest beneath us. She had her arms on my shoulders and was clutching me close to her. I looked up to her face and saw many eyes scattered around her head and the little holes that covered where her mouth should be. She spoke to me in a grating language that my waking mind would not be able to comprehend, though for how much longer that fact remains true I’m not certain.

Trying to remember what the lady looked like made Ian shiver as it dawned on him just how alien she truly was. How had he fallen into her clutches so easily? Was “her” even appropriate terminology? Humans hadn’t even figured out gender yet, so what need did an interstellar conqueror have for it?

Ian wrote out an accurate record of how he’d been transformed over the course of the past couple of weeks. It was a little wonky, he’d admit, because in the story Stephen wasn’t experiencing unexplained monster attacks. That would have made the story feel a little bloated and Ian preferred more streamlined plots.

When she laid out on what I can only barely describe as a couch, her tail come up and wrapped around her leg. It split into three smaller tendrils toward the end, each covered in thorns on one side and suction cups on the other. Ian’s own tails squirmed beneath him as his stomach churned; was she making him more like her? How could I have fallen so far for this creature and only realized too late what was happening? In hindsight, it’s obvious how wretched a monstrosity she really is if she would claim my entire world and my mind along with it. Even now, I don’t know if I can trust my thoughts. How long before she pulls the leash taut and I completely lose my sense of self?

Ian wasn’t even pretending that this was about Stephen anymore. This was less about telling a coherent story and much more about keeping an accurate, or close to accurate, explanation of what was happening to him and his thoughts. What would the lady say if she knew that he was having doubts?

What?

No.

No, that wasn’t right.

He groaned and buried his head in his hands as shame washed over him. Ian was quickly losing control, if he could even rightly call himself Ian anymore. In the end, he was just going to be a puppet for a creature so much larger than himself. Part of his mind insisted that it was simply human nature to submit to a loving force bigger than oneself, but he sincerely hoped that most people valued freedom too much for that.

The worst thing about the lady is that she didn’t have the decency to take control over him all at once so he didn’t have the chance to suffer. Why target him, specifically, when Ian was a complete nobody? He’d never done anything meaningful in his life. When was the last time Ian even had a real friend?

Ian sat there for a while longer, tapping out his thoughts into a word document while it got dark outside. The longer he sat, the more tense he became, until it became clear that he needed to get up and stretch. What time was it? According to the computer, it was well into the night, meaning that most people would be inside by now.

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Perhaps he could risk stepping outside for a few minutes without the fear of being seen. Ian was sure that there were no monsters out there even if his legs were a little wobbly, but the thought of another human being seeing him and freaking out weighed heavily on Ian. There was a vending machine near the lobby, too, and while Ian didn’t need to eat as much anymore he did have the smallest of stomach pangs; a chocolate bar or two would keep him full for another couple of days.

He bundled himself up with the headscarf and a heavy jacket, holding his tail flat against his body so it didn’t catch any attention. Why did he bother. Why should Ian hide his body from the world—?

No! That wasn’t his thought! That was the lady trying to manipulate him. If Ian went out fully exposed, it would only end in disaster!

Ian opened the door a peep and glanced both ways in case there were any people or worse outside. It looked vacant, so he inched out and closed the door behind him. He kept his head on a swivel and his shoulders hunched while scurrying toward the vending machine. His hands were shaking as he reached into the pocket of his skirt for his wallet.

A soda sounded really good right now, as did that small cinnamon snack that made Ian’s mouth water. Ian chugged the soda right away and tossed the can into the bin before opening the little food package. When he turned around to head back to his room, though, Ian stopped still and dropped his little treat.

Standing in the middle of the nearly empty parking lot was a tall eight-legged creature with an upside-down human face. It scurried toward him like a centipede with its mouth split like a snake’s jaw. Ian turned and ran, hearing the patter behind him as it sped up.

With a leap, Ian slid across the hood of a car. The creature bumped right into it and the alarm went off. Ian screamed for help with a shrill shriek, but all he could hear was the distant sound of traffic. He made it to the end of the parking lot before something crashed into him, throwing him to the ground. Teeth sunk into his shoulder and again Ian screamed, this time in agony.

Spots filled his vision but Ian didn’t faint right away. He could feel tendrils reaching into his mind, tearing his thoughts apart. His body was soft and pliable; everything was shifting. It hurt so much but felt so right. Everything was awful and everything was being made better. He was being destroyed and being perfected. It was a mercy when Ian finally passed out and the thoughts let him be.

The first thing that Ian noticed when he came to was that he was breathing heavily while splayed out on the hard ground. This wasn’t the carpet of his motel room. It felt like… pavement? Someone was talking to him.

Ian rubbed his head and pulled himself into a sitting position, a mix of strange colors occluding his sight. A college kid was staring at him, and judging by the look on his face he was more than a little tipsy. What was he saying? Something about a costume?

Ian placed a hand on his cheek and his heart sank, creating a cold pit in his stomach. Springing to his feet, Ian turned away from the kid and hunched over so his body was hidden. He’d changed more in the night and just been laying out for anybody to see!

It was still dark, which meant that not many people could have seen him yet, but there was a hint of pink on the horizon. Ian took off running for his room, the drunk college student calling out after him. He crashed through the bedroom door, slamming it shut behind him once he was safely inside.

Ian stood there for a few minutes, choking back sobs as he took in the strange new sensations bombarding him. Tearing off the headscarf and the jacket he was wearing, Ian stumbled into the bathroom. He stared at the mirror while tears streamed down his cheeks before collapsing to the floor with ragged breaths.

Once he could look again, Ian stripped off his tee shirt and skirt to take in the changes. His skin was all bright chromatic blue scales now, covered in little angular holes that the back of his mind told him was for heat regulation. He had a full muzzle with carnivorous teeth, ears completely gone while his hair had been reduced to long stiff barbs about as thick as his pinky finger that cascaded down to his shoulders.

There were smaller eyes all around his main eyes, and closing them individually changed what he could see. A nagging sensation in his brain told him that he was seeing different spectra of light. The tail had grown considerably, long and thick with suction pads at the end, but nowhere near as over-the-top as the lady’s had been.

Ian collapsed to the floor and leaned against the wall while sobbing openly. He couldn’t even recognize himself anymore. Nobody would believe he was really Ian, if he even was at this point. Why couldn’t he fight back against this at all? What was the point of it progressing so slowly if he couldn’t do anything but let them strip away his humanity? Even if he’d never wanted to be human, it was still his right to choose! This wasn’t fair!

Some half an hour later, Ian was sitting at the small desk in front of a sheet of paper and a pen. What was he doing? It was so easy to see the lady in all her glory and horror in the periphery of his mind, but Ian had never been an artist. Could he pull this off?

It was a struggle to capture what she looked like from a front angle; she had so many strange edges and many odd features. He vaguely remembered her claws and chitinous skin but wasn’t sure if she had five or six fingers on each hand. Thinking too hard about what her head looked like—the many eyes, the curling and uncurling horns, the holes that made up her mouth—made Ian want to hurl and hide under the covers. She had a pair of skeletal wings with silky, iridescent webbing that was almost transparent, but how was Ian supposed to capture that in a sketch?

His hand was shaking because Ian was just so tired. When he went to sleep again, he would see the lady and Ian just wasn’t himself in those dreams. In those dreams, he was fully whatever the lady wanted him to be, fully Eloise. In another day or two, she would be on his planet anyway and then he wouldn’t be able to hold onto even his name anymore.