Unicorn
When you come to, you are no longer in your living room and familiar home. Flat on your
back, you blink several times as an entirely white room swims into focus. It is perfectly
circular with no sharp corners, a most intriguing design that has no beginning and no end.
It makes your head spin and you groan, propping yourself up into a sitting position. Your
arm quivers, struggling to support your weight. What has weakened you so? You swallow
the lump in your throat and trace your hand over the smooth linoleum, the faint aroma of
cheap alcohol lingering on your breath. Panic sets in, twisting and contorting your stomach
as if filled by a rope of snakes. Are you trapped? You stagger to your feet, the room tilting
sickeningly, and call out.
“Hello?” You shout, leaning into the comforting embrace of the cool, white wall. “Is anyone
there?”
No one answers and you lower your head stupidly, wondering what you expected. Clearing
your throat, you cough hard, forgetting to cover your lips with the palm of your hand. Your
arm itches and you scratch it without thinking, lips turning down in a frown when it does not
immediately relinquish its annoyance. How are you going to get out of this room? Pacing,
you lose track of where you began and run a handful of prickling fingertips over the seamless
surface, searching for a flaw in the pattern of nothingness. Why won’t the itching go away?
You mumble a curse under your breath and peer at the back of your hand where the itch has
struck up something fierce, expecting to see an insect of some kind causing the disturbance.
Your eyes widen sharply and you stumble backwards, back flattening against the curve of the
wall. Holding your hand away from your body as if it is infected, you tremble at the sight of
the sprouting black hair, covering your skin as if by an animal’s fur. A non-human cry darts
past your lips and you slap the back of your hand, striving to scrape the hair away with your
short fingernails. A hallucination — the hair is not disappearing. A hallucination it must be, for
you refuse to believe that you are growing hair not only on your one hand now. Your other
hand is also afflicted and the hair spreads up both arms at a terrifying rate. You whimper and
crumple to the floor. What is happening to you?
The hair disappears beneath the sleeves of your loose fitting shirt and your belly is sucked
inwards, a lighter ‘padding’ softening the appearance of your masculine body. Groaning
harshly, you pant open-mouthed like a rabid dog and wrap your arms around your torso as
the itching sensation races up your chest and to your head. The fat from your stomach seems
to be migrating to your chest, though the feeling of femininity is unfamiliar to you and the
knuckle-cracking in your head is adequate distraction as your face changes in a way that you
cannot see. Bones grind and grate against one another for a brief, painful moment, realining,
and your eyes slide to the side. Your vision is left oddly distorted as you cannot see directly
in front of your nose any longer as it has shot forward as an animalistic snout.
Gasping for breath, you crawl into the centre of the room on all fours, shoes splitting and
leg bones rearranging themselves so that you appear to be ‘standing’ on your toes, although
your feet are hard and unyielding. You rock from side to side and something unknown shoots
from the base of your spine, wriggling down your now much looser jeans and slapping
against your left leg as if your spine has been stretched like putty. Between your legs, there
is an uncomfortable sensation as your genitals churn, twisting without known feeling and
seeming to...shrink? You are not sure and clap a new ‘paw’ (tipped with hard, wide nails on
the fingers) between your thighs, grasping nothing that may be constituted as proud maleness.
Something solid rises from the centre of your forehead and a silvery lock of hair flicks into
sight as your hairline rearranges itself down the back of your neck and a fringe cascades into
your eyes.
And everything stops. Your breath comes in short bursts as if you cannot quite catch your
breath after running yourself into the ground. Inherently, you know that you are no longer a
male but you refuse to understand or accept the moderate breasts on your chest or the snug
femininity between your legs. The rest of your transformation is uncertain and, before you
have the chance to contemplate your situation, bright light streams into the room from your
right. A door, blended seamlessly with the wall, slides open noiselessly and you narrow your
eyes at who enters, his hooves clopping loudly on the lewd linoleum.
Written by Amethyst Mare on 31 March 2013