Flying
You look at the costume you pulled out of your pack. Somehow, you managed to pull out what must have been the most disgusting costume in the place. Spreading it out in the faint light at the bottom of the dry well, you are both pleased and disgusted with your random selection - a giant bat.
The costume radiates a feeling of unpleasantness. You shudder. If your guess is right and the skin does what you think it does, getting out shouldn't be a problem. Bats are made for flying in caves, right?
Still, even if those clothes granted you the power of the bat, what would the trade-off be? Would anything be... permanent? Not wanting to give in to the beckoning magic before you absolutely need to, you try scaling the walls without any supernatural help.
ooof!
You don't get very far up before you slip and land on the floor. The dark magics of the costume beckon, pulling harder on your mind. I can help... it seems to say.
You remember your friends, family, and Cory, none of whom you will see if you stay stuck in this subterranean hole. With a sigh, you give in. Really, what's the worst that can really happen? Surely you'll just embarrass yourself where nobody can even see you, right?
Sensing victory, the costume seems to project a warm feeling of welcome, but as you pick it up you realize that genuine bat hides can only be so welcoming no matter how nicely the parts are stitched. You close your eyes and throw the costume over your shoulders.
As the bat suit sits on your shoulders, you feel it bind tightly to your skin. It feels like the suit is putting itself on you! You scream a high-pitched scream, which grows higher and higher as the costume takes over and melds with your body.
Your cute little nose widens to become horrifyingly large and flat. The smile that cost three years of pain through braces grows fangs for piercing fruit and is licked by a tongue twice as long, a tongue that lusts for sweet insect meat. Your ears seem to explode off your head, and are much too shockingly large to hide behind your hair - which is probably for the best, as your hair is rapidly becoming short fur that couldn't hide anything, anyways.
The soft fur replaces not only your hair, but begins to grow almost everywhere on your body - even the tiny tail stub that's giving your jeans an uncomfortable fit. Your shirt is bulging left and right as the skin on your sides grows out along your arm, becoming a wing membrane. As the membrane reaches your pinky fingers, they bend at a most unnatural angle and cause all your fingers to grow. And grow. And grow. The membrane eventually takes over all your fingers, leaving only a long thumb with a sharp, hooked claw outside the wing structure.
You look at your wings. Your shirt burst under the pressure and is now two rags at the well floor. You spread your fingers, which opens your wings, then bring your fingers together to close them. Fascinated, you hug yourself as you look over the rest of yourself. You're still wearing jeans, and though they're a bit uncomfortable with the tail stub, you decide to leave them on. Your shoes are wrecked, shredded by your newly clawed feet, and you kick what's left of them off. It's harder than it should have been, because you can't use your hands for that kind of thing anymore, but eventually you discover that your feet are almost as dexterous as your hands were. Standing on one foot at a time, you're able to pluck the bits of shoe out from between your toes.
Now that the major weirdness is over, it's time to fly! You spread your wings, only to find that the wingspan of a human-sized bat is more than the width of the well you're in. You nearly succumb to despair, but a niggling desire in your bat-brain wants to be out! You start climbing the walls, discovering that your hooked thumb and clawed feet make fairly light work of the climb. Of course, having hollow bones now probably doesn't hurt, either! You suppose it makes sense for bats to be good at climbing, since they usually live in trees and such.
When you finally reach the top of the well, you're surprised at how dark everything seems. Is it really that late, or are your eyes really that much worse than they were? Either way, you're starting to feel tired, so you climb a nearby tree. Bats like to hang when they rest, right? You tentatively try hanging from one of the tree's branches, picking one that's not too close to the ground but not too thin, either. Hanging upside down feels surprisingly natural to you, and you wrap your wing-arms around you as though you were hugging yourself.
You begin drifting in and out of a half-sleep as you watch the world go by.
Written by Sam on 17 July 2007
The end (for now)