It should've been a perfectly normal day at Wal-Mart for the Harper family. Unfortunately for them, they happened to be in front of the dairy section as the impatient witch walked to the same area. She didn't give any warning; she simply snapped her fingers as Jessie, the mother, turned to look in her direction. In an instant, the biracial family vanished into thin air, suddenly teleported to completely different places in their new, horrific forms.
-------------
Joshua, the patriarch of the family, found himself in a smelly garbage can amongst dozens of houseflies. His vision was fractured into hundreds of separate sections, yet his brain somehow helped him make sense of everything. He could instinctively walk around on his six spindly legs, and a sudden gust of wind from the lid being opened motivated his wings into action. In confusion, he managed to fly out of the garbage can, finding himself in a truly gigantic kitchen. He clumsily flew around, exploring the unfamiliar house he now found himself in.
Having flown through a random door, Joshua found himself in a bedroom highlighted by bright pink walls. He saw a mirror attached to a closet door, and headed in it's direction. He had a strong idea of what had happened to him, but he wanted confirmation. Sure enough, reflected in the huge mirror's surface was a tiny housefly, no different from the dozens still trapped in the kitchen garbage can he woke up in.
Instinct drove him to fly back to the kitchen, finding himself back in the disgusting garbage can with his new brethren. With a mental sigh, Joshua stuck his proboscis into a piece of rotting apple, gorging his gross fly body on what would turn out to be a delicacy in his new life. Absentmindedly, he wondered if his wife and sons were okay.
Two weeks later, the man-turned-fly landed on a vast expanse of blue after a meal of rotting banana. An unholy noise boomed around him, scrambling his senses. His hearing was no longer attuned to human speech, so he could never have known that the little girl whose jean skirt he had unknowingly landed on had spoken up, her hand raised over his tiny, fragile body. "Hang on sis, a stupid fly just landed on my skirt. Just a second..."
-------------
Jessie woke up in an unfamiliar forested landscape, gargantuan to her new perspective. Resting on the vast green expanse of a single leaf in the Amazon, her new instincts led her to spread her newfound wings to take flight. Her fragmented vision let her see the lush jungle around her, and she took in her new body as best as she could. She was met with long, spindly legs connected to an abdomen that stretched behind her. She extended her new, unwanted proboscis, sensing that it would double as a needle to pierce an unsuspecting animal's skin.
A scent filled the air, unfamiliar to the woman but delectable to her new insect brain. Indulging her new instincts, she clumsily buzzed to a nearby tapir that completely dwarfed her. The continental animal barely noticed as she landed, pierced it's skin, then began feasting on it's blood. Jessie was disgusted that she had settled into the routine of a simple mosquito so quickly, but she didn't really see a way out of it. After she had her fill, she took off once again. Her senses had picked up the pheromones of a male, and while she wanted to remain loyal to her husband, she supposed she would never see him again anyway.
It was only a few days later, after she had laid a clutch of eggs to continue her new bloodline, that she noticed a group of tourists walking through her new home. Jessie's instincts led her to take the risk of targeting one of them, a particularly sweaty man who could clearly do with cutting back on his eating. She knew it would be a quick, easy and large meal, so she landed gingerly on his exposed forearm. The transformed mosquito had hardly begun drinking when the man reacted suddenly and violently to her presence. "Son of a... I hate these damn bugs. Can't wait to get back to the hotel..."
-------------
Calvin, the 9-year-old elder son, came to in darkness, his new vision letting him see the multitudes of ants he would now call his colony. While his other transformed family members retained some level of control over their new bodies' actions, Calvin found himself unable to resist his new brain's programming. He was effectively a slave to the pheromones that told his body what to do.
Calvin's days would consist of a pretty regular routine. He would either find food for the colony, care for his queen's eggs, or help defend the colony from invaders. Luckily for the transformed boy, he wasn't required to do the latter task very often, as he was only a worker ant. The threat of titanic humans was non-existent, as he had been transported to the middle of a small forest in Washington. He simply acted as a passenger in his own insect body, wishing he could've at least said goodbye to his family.
Months later, he was confined underground under a thick blanket of snow. The colony would hunker down for the winter, waiting for the spring thaw. Calvin unwillingly complied with the unspoken order from his queen, along with the hundreds of other ants in the sprawling network of tiny tunnels he now called home.
-------------
Finally, 7-year-old Henry found himself in a completely alien landscape of branch-sized strands of hair and skin flakes bigger than his own foreign body. He clung for dear life to one of them, trying to come to terms with his unfamiliar feeling body. His vision seemed to be mostly confined to his sides, although he could see at least a little bit in front. Instead of a human mouth, he had clear pincers, perfect for biting into this planet-sized human's scalp. To his sides, six translucent insectoid legs clung to the huge strand of hair, aided by little hooks on the ends. He felt his abdomen stretch behind him, and the fairly intelligent boy put the pieces together.
He's had head lice before, and now he seemed to have been transformed into one. Who had done this to him, and why, was unknown to him, and he was left wondering what he had done to deserve this fate. He also wondered where his family was, and found himself at least curious as to whose head of hair he had woken up in.
Driven by instinct, he reluctantly climbed down the strand of hair, ambling around the person's scalp on his insectoid legs. Henry's pincers dug into the layer of dead skin, dissolving some of it so he could digest it more easily. It wasn't exactly the best thing he had ever tasted, but his new senses seemed to enjoy it. As he fed, he sensed a disturbance somewhere else, reacting to either his presence or that of another louse. The hair around him began swaying violently as he heard the distorted sound of a head being scratched.
Henry considered himself lucky that the human hadn't pinpointed his location, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he was discovered.
Two days later, the little blonde girl had been sent home from 1st Grade because of her newly discovered head lice. Her mother helped her take a shower, massaging a lather of medicated shampoo into her hair. As it was rinsed out, a single unassuming transformed louse, unseen by either galaxy-sized human, found himself being washed down the drain...
No comments:
Post a Comment