A Change

It was dark outside, but as I looked outside to see the storm all I saw was my own reflection; pale and horrified. what happened?... I thought to myself in dismay as I stared at my features. I had always been small; short, little eyes, little nose, little mouth.
Except for one distinguishing feature; one that had been recently added.
A huge red gash running from the corner of my eye down to my mouth. I didn't notice until then that I could not remember where it came from. I searched through my brain, thoughts ranging from playing outside on the swings to clenching an ax and swinging for my life; feeling the warm tingling sensation of blood spattering of my face with every blow. Then I recalled falling down a couple of flights of stairs earlier."Yeah, real graceful." I mindlessly said out loud. Thinking about it, I noticed how quickly the world had turned into shambles; from a place of some order to chaos. All this thinking had me severely distracted; that was a huge mistake.

I turned around, still perplexed and thinking about "life" now days and I felt evil. It was a horrible feeling, but for some reason it gave me the need to laugh. I can imagine now; seeing a petite girl standing in the middle of what used to be a crowded mall super center, dirty and bloody, laughing her head off. Creepy. Then I saw it, out of the corner of my eye, a movement in the shadows. My defense instinct kicked in and I got low to the ground and stopped breathing... and laughing like a madman. I could hear it all, the low growl of the thing that resided in the dark corners, the building creaking as it swayed in the wind, and the quiet patter of the rain outside; probably the only pure thing left in this world. If I had been more alert earlier; not thinking about stupid things that didn't matter; that had not mattered for a year now, I probably would have seen the shape of the shadow, noticed what it was and what it wasn't... but I didn't. It jumped out at me; out of training over the year I quickly drew my gun out and fired at the thing; another bad choice. It was not a "thing" at all, it was what I had seen, a shadow. A ghost. It passed through me, and I felt the evil intensify, the feeling that it gave me was more than a want to laugh, it was a want to destroy, to ruin, to kill. All feelings flooded though me, at the same time, and left just as quickly, leaving me paralyzed. The thing came back around, and stared at me with it's cold red eyes. It talked to me; but its mouth didn't move. The voice was deep and disembodied, more than scary. "Don't fire upon that which is unknown, you only start a war, bad first impression my friend. This will cost you." With that it disappeared and in its place arouse a Morfid, the things that have infested the world. I never learned much about them, I just know that they come from a meteor, as if the damage it caused wasn't enough. They invaded, they are primitive, brainless, soulless. They feed off all things with flesh, everything. If you find yourself looking one in the eye; you're dead. That is unless you get "lucky" and it just bites you, then you turn into one of them. It launched at me, still paralyzed the only thing I could do was watch. I was stunned by how fast it moved, in a fraction of a second it was on me, the next I could feel its ragged teeth sink into my head. So this is the end... I thought. With that I slipped into the darkness of oblivion.

I woke up on the cold floor, in a room that looked hardly familiar. What in the world...? I got up and was immediately disoriented; blood rushed to my head and I almost fell over. As I stumbled across the floor, I heard a loud crack and my foot stepped on something smooth, a mirror. I instinctively looked down and was mortified at what I saw. I saw me, of course, but different. Changed. I could tell mostly from my eyes; they had red rings on the soft skin that lined the corners of my pupils. Out of instinct I raised my hand to touch them, and all I felt was pain, it was terrible. In unexplainable fear I ran out of the building, and was hit by the blinding rays of the sun, something I had not seen in weeks. I hissed because I was not used to the light, but I immediately giggled at the fact that I had actually hissed at the presence of the sun. I had an indescribable urge to skip down the street, to sing, and to dance, and to destroy everything in my path. "Whoa," I thought, "where did that last thought come from?" I shrugged it off and ran through the destroyed ruins of what used to be Berlin, and smiled the whole way, like a child running to gamestop on their birthday with a hundred dollars beaming to buy their first game for their new X-box. Then I stopped dead in my tracks; there was a bench in my way. I grinned, "So what will I do with you?" I said out loud. The next few moments were life changing. I was only a witness, I felt it happening but I could not control it. I reached down and grabbed the bench in front of me. It only took a little flick of my wrist; suddenly the bench was ripped out of the ground (it was screwed down to the solid concrete) and it was flying through the air. I should have been like "hahaha, OH MY GOD, THIS RULES," but instead I was horrified; I stared at the gaping hole left in the ground where the bench used to be, and everything came rushing back. The night before, I remembered it all. It bit me, the thing bit me, I'm changing. I'm dying. It bit me... it bit me... it bit me...I'm going to die..... was all I could think. I remembered what my friend had told me before he died (he was bitten as well, this was back when the infestation was not out of control) he had said "Listen, the doctors told me... this thing, it destroys the brain, it takes over, it needs a host." he laughed, "It's almost the way they breed, like flies... When they disconnect me, its not me that they are killing, I'm already dead. I can feel it, I'm loosing who I am.... Just don't try to stop them or whatever, because I know how you are and you would probably sue them and charge them for murder or something." With that I could see the change. He suddenly lurched at me, driven by a force unknown. I was struck with "good luck," because in that instant he pulled away the cords that were keeping him alive and he stopped dead, literally. I remember that day, as I walked out of the hospital in a daze, I remembered the fear, thinking "What is going to happen? They can't keep this under control, what happens when they take over?" I was completely right. Shortly after everything in the world, every powerful country, was over run with the disease/infection/invasion/phenomenon. The earth was destroyed from the inside. Not a single thing good lasted.