Your Gaia Name: mouselet
Medium Used: words
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Light. Cool, grey sunlight. You blink, forcing your eyes to focus, feeling like you’ve just woken up. The birds are resuming their songs after some interruption, and you can hear more melodies still being added to the cacophony. It’s a beautiful day.

You’re in front of the cottage; looking out on the same vista you’ve known your entire life. And something’s not right. You’re absolutely certain something is terribly wrong.

Something behind you is dying.

You don’t want to turn around. You can feel deep in your bones that turning around will bring nothing good. You would much rather maintain your naive illusions than look behind you.

But you’re human, and to be human is to be curious. If you don’t look now, you’ll always wonder. If you do look, you’ll probably regret it. You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and turn.

The smell hits you first. A miasma almost too thick to breathe in of blood and flesh just beginning to rot. It hits you more powerfully than any stench you’ve ever known before.

The shock forces your eyes open.

You gasp and clap your hands over your mouth like some cliché come to life. Words, meaningless and pointless, build up under your hands, but die away before even a wisp of sound escapes.

The scene is no better with a little distance added, you realize, stumbling backwards down the steps.

You can’t really think, can only stare at the carnage.

You don’t really want to think, not while your parents stare up at you, their faces eternally frozen in fear. You wonder if this is some nightmare as you retreat even further. You bite your lip and wince inwardly at the taste of blood in your mouth. Not a nightmare.

Trembling, you draw near once again. You have to look, to feel their stiffening corpses for yourself.

Your mothers hand over your fathers. At least they died together. You avert your eyes from the clawmarks at their throats, trying to bring to mind the already fading memories of them in life.

Your father’s strong chin which you inherited...that chin, you imagine, was raised defiantly down to the very last. And those grey eyes...you can’t stand the sight of them so wide and blank in fear.

You turn to your mother for reassurance as you have so many countless times before. If you ignore the fear-filled stare, the same as on your fathers face, she looks just as she always has. Just as serene as ever. Except that the mother you loved never had so much as a strand of hair out of place.

The claw that sliced her throat also severed the tie restraining her hair. You admire the lank corona that you’ve never seen, not even as she slept. But it’s not your mother. Irritated and bereft, you reach out to gently smooth the stray hairs from her face.

You hesitate, hand inches from her clammy skin. You’re having trouble breathing. It’s even worse than when you recognized your parents’ broken bodies just a few minutes before. Or a few hours. Time’s seemed liquid since you woke up.

Not that you can spare the attention for the passing time.

Your hand is not the grubby hand with gnawed-on nails you’ve always known. For one thing, your nails are smooth and whole, and lengthened to clawlike proportions.

Another thing. Your hand is covered in blood.

And you know in that way beyond knowing that it’s your parents’ blood. In fact, you’ve known the entire time, in the back of your mind. You can envision it so clearly, and when you crook your hands you can almost remember ripping their throats out like some fierce animal.

But you can’t remember. You can’t remember killing them, or even returning to the cottage. The last thing you remember is the sinking feeling that the spell was going terribly wrong....

And then nothing.

Suddenly it becomes a simple task to ignore your slain parents. You leap over their fallen bodies and gaping throats and run for their bedroom. You know that there’s a mirror there, a beautiful present your father once brought home for your mother. She only used it to fix her hair.

You skid to a halt in front of the mirror and the large old dresser it rests on top of.

The reflection is not your face.

Or rather, it’s not the face you want to see looking back at you. The shape and the bones and the color are the same, but the similarities end there.

You reach out a clawed and bloodstained hand to touch, as if it could only then be real. You stroke your shock of white hair, caring nothing about the red streaks your fingers leave behind. You lean in close to stare at your own red eyes. You gasp, and then run a nail down your fangs.

The same fascination and curiosity that got you into this mess rises again. You swallow hard, too torn to comprehend much more. The weight of the day’s events is like an iron band pressing down on your skull. You feel faint and sick. You’re disgusted with yourself and, at the same time, elated.

You feel so lost, so alone. You long for your mother to stroke your hair; her hair that you’d inherited, and tell you stories of mythical creatures and legends. You wish for your father to tell stories about the world he saw on his travels as he whittles away. You’d even settle for the whole day being some horrible nightmare.

You pillow your face in your arms and cry. There’s nothing else you can do right now, and every tear shed here is one you won’t have to hide later.

You’ll bury your parents tomorrow. Then you’ll leave the only home you’ve ever known. And if you look back while you’re trying to understand what you’ve become, no one will know.