Chapter 7
He had no concept of time or place in the first few moments after he awoke. Ryan peeled open his good eye and saw he was in his room. He had fallen into bed with the sun still hovering over the horizon, but as Ryan gingerly lifted his throbbing head, he could see through half-closed blinds that night had only just fallen. The sun was gone but the last traces of its glow still hung like curtains, low in the westerly sky. He felt like he had been asleep for hours, but he knew it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
Ryan wasn’t sure why he had woken up so quickly, but he guessed it had something to do with the pain. It didn’t feel like any of his ribs had broken again, and all the bones in his face still felt intact, but that was the good news. His left eye was swollen completely shut and his lower lip felt rubbery and three sizes too big. His jaw ached with even the tiniest movement and the headache was almost unbearable. Pain enveloped him like a blanket from head to waist.
Ryan grasped his t-shirt to pull it over his head and he gasped with pain as his shoulder gave searing protest. He pulled off the shirt that was still sticky from the blood, both his and the man’s, and he examined his torso. His chest and stomach were polka-dotted with the beginnings of bruises, his arms and elbows were scraped and scratched with small pieces of asphalt still embedded in the skin, and his knuckles were red and raw beneath a thick coating of brown crusted blood.
He eased himself to his feet with as little movement of his head as possible. Ryan’s legs were shaky at first, but they seemed to be the only part of him that wasn’t damaged. He trudged across the hall and into the bathroom where he peeled off his remaining clothes and took a shower.
Ryan sat down and rested his head against the tile. He let the water pour over him and he watched as unpleasant hues of red and brown washed off him and slid against the stark white of the bathtub. Ryan watched for a long time, his entire body still, until the water coming off his body was finally the same color as when it had started.
His mind sifted through what had happened. Despite his injuries, Ryan was glad he had intervened, but angry he had failed so miserably against the man. He was glad that the woman had gotten away, but angry when he considered that the man had probably ended up at the red brick house anyway, and Ryan was certain that’s where the woman had gone. A shudder ran through him and he worried that his actions might have made things worse, that he had made the man even angrier and the woman would still be in danger. The only solace Ryan could find was in the hope that the broken nose had taken the fight out of the man. Even if Ryan were angry and drunk, he didn’t have the physical strength left to hit anyone. He only hoped the man was in a similar state, or that the woman had the sense to get out while she could. He knew he probably should have tried to speak to the man before tackling him, but Ryan had a feeling it would have come to blows either way.
The water had been slowly losing its warmth, but Ryan couldn’t muster the strength to reach up and turn it off. He took a deep breath and clambered to his feet. He shut off the water and stood for a while, dripping dry.
He walked back into his bedroom, dabbing at himself with a towel as he tried to avoid contact with the patchwork of bruises and scrapes.
His bed looked terrible, and it reminded Ryan of something out of a war movie. He had fallen unconscious face-down, and the large splotch of blood on the front of his shirt had transferred to his sheets. The pillow, too, had been soaking up the blood from Ryan’s face. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get the stains out, if he even could, but at the moment Ryan didn’t care. He took the time to cover most of the bed with his comforter, flipped the pillow so the bloody side was down, and buried his bloody shirt at the bottom of a pile of other dirty clothes. It was as much effort as he was going to put into it tonight. Ryan didn’t know how he was going to explain this fresh batch of injuries, but maybe if his parents got home late enough he could avoid them until the following afternoon. Hopefully by then he’d have come up with some kind of story.
He pulled on a pair of jeans and crossed the small room to flip on the desk lamp. Night had fallen completely now, and Ryan reached over his desk and slid open the window. The October air was chilly, but it felt good on his face and chest, like a giant ice pack. He closed his eyes and stood there, enjoying the air as he supported his weakened frame with one hand on the sill and one on the desk in front of him. It was quiet, peaceful. Ryan felt like he could stand there forever. Then his knees buckled.
He hadn’t braced himself to support his full weight, so he pitched forward and slammed his upper half onto the top of the desk and knocked the lamp to the floor. He slid off the desk and fell backwards onto the carpet.
He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, then hesitated. Ryan didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that if another one of his limbs was going to suddenly fail him, he wanted to be closer to the ground when it happened. He remained there for a moment, tensed, then slowly, deliberately, pushed himself back onto his feet.
Ryan was almost back to standing upright when the second wave came, much different from the first. His insides, his stomach, felt as though he was being kicked from all sides. He felt his organs press and contort, shifting and moving completely on their own. It was as if he had swallowed a dozen snakes and they were all trying to escape at once. It was nausea like he had never experienced, but his organs were shifting so much that the bile couldn’t reach his throat. Ryan bent double and clutched his body as his fingers raked his sides. His face was contorted into a terrible grimace and he grunted with the exertion, but somewhere in the back of his mind Ryan realized that what was happening wasn’t strictly painful, just unbearably unpleasant.
As quickly as it had come, the violent jostling inside of him subsided. It was still happening, Ryan could still feel it and he still clung to himself, but it had lessened. He felt the movement slow, then stop entirely, and he let out a long gasp.
It was then that Ryan experienced the most excruciating pain he had ever known. What had happened to him in the woods, what had happened to him in the street, they were nothing compared to this. Ryan fell onto the floor with a thud as his body was wracked with a level of agony that he didn’t think was possible. Ryan knew it without a doubt: this was going to kill him.
He felt his limbs begin to lengthen. The bones and skin of Ryan’s arm stretched out to impossible lengths, but the skin didn’t stretch quite as quickly, which created the sensation that his arms were being pulled apart from the inside. His legs followed suit and the unimaginable pain doubled. Ryan screamed in agony.
Suddenly, a coarse, gray fur sprouted all over his body. Ryan raised his hands to his face and watched as his fingers elongated and then curved into wicked claws. His shoulders and chest grew impossibly broad, and then Ryan felt the muscles in his legs and arms swell and thicken. He looked down and saw the lower half of his pant legs expand, then rip apart as they hung in shreds off the top half of his jeans. He watched as his feet grew and grew and never seemed to stop growing as they formed themselves into gigantic, padded paws.
Ryan started screaming again and the sound reverberated off the walls and bounced back to him from all angles. He felt the changes in his body slow, but the pain seemed as excruciating as ever. At the same time, he felt the skin of his face and head being pulled and tugged. His ears moved, working their way farther up his head and he felt as the bones in his face elongated into a muzzle. This was the worst pain of all and Ryan instinctively filled his gigantic lungs and let loose another hellish scream. He felt his teeth shift, grow, and sharpen. As they did, Ryan heard his own scream change. His tortured, guttural cry became a low, savage roar that was unlike anything Ryan had ever before heard, much less produced.
As his body finished its transformation, the roar subsided into a labored gasp. Until now the only thing that had kept him conscious was the pain, but that had passed. For the second time that night, Ryan blacked out.