It all started when I forgot Math.  The test before me seemed like a jungle of numbers I could not comprehend.  And my hands…

My hands were no longer my hands.  The scales that formed upon them couldn’t weigh a single grain of sand.  Answers seemed like a quest in a foreign place I learned about in History class; My calculations imprisoned and guarded by some uncrackable riddle, proposed by some unnatural being I had yet to meet.  

That’s when it happened.  Fear.  The uncontrollable sensation to flee.  To become something…not me.  

“I have to get out of here,” I whispered to myself. 

“I have to get out of here!” My head shrieked, “Get out, get out, get out,” in repetition.  

The scales multiplied, limbs elongated and a tail formed appropriately between my legs.  Biting my nails became biting my fingers became devouring my own arm with the hope it could all grow back again.

“If I change form, I can grow back again,” I thought, “If I simply change..” 

I sat slumped in my new skin, in my new jungle; My arm dangling from my mouth and blood dripping.  And dripping.  And dripping.  Now a pool of thoughts still crippling.  The riddle continued to swell in my brain. The neurons severed and strained.  No appendage gained.  I was the same.

Fuck.  I was the same.