I wake with a start and try to sit upright, but can’t; I’m still restrained. Not a dream then. The first thing I notice it the tubes up my nose. They’re irritating and slightly painful. Not to mention they hinder my breathing. There a needles in my arms too. Five of them; three on one arm, two on the other. They’re taped down and are feeding different IV fluids into my body. I shudder and the different hanging bags. One has a transparent blue colored liquid, three of contain clear liquid, and the final one has a thick red liquid in it. It doesn’t take me long to figure out what it is and I instantly feel sorry for the donner. That’s a lot of blood.

I glance to my left and see Jenny sitting in a plastic chair that’s pushed against the wall with the panel of one-way glass. Her legs are curled up on the chair and her nose is in a book. I can’t see the title. “Jenny?” I manage to whisper her name. My throat is insanely dry and it’s making my voice raspy.

She glances up and offers me a small smile. She gets up, walks over, and brushes some hair off my face. “Hey,” she greets, her voice soft. “How are you feeling?”

“Groggy. Like I’ve been turned inside out,” I mutter.

“Sorry sweetie.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“About twelve hours,” she replies. “You’ve done pretty well so far.”

“It’s started then?” I instantly regret asking.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“I’m afraid to move my legs,” I whisper. “Are they still…legs?”

“Yes. They’ll be last to change. Second to last part of the procedure.”

“Am I going to regret asking what is changed? Like, what it looks like?”

“Do you want to know?”

“I don’t know, yes, no…yes.”

Jenny laughs a little. “Look at me and open your eyes as wide as you can.” I frown but comply and she stares intently at my eyes. “It’s barely noticeable, but really kind of cool,” she comments.

“What?”

“Your eyes. I’ve been grilled on all the changes and on mermaid physiology over the past couple of hours. Your eyes have a bit of a glassy shine to them now. It’s supposed to allow you to see clearly underwater, and you have to look closely to really notice it, but at first glance, they do look a little…glossy? Do I look blurry to you?”

“What? No, why?”

“Just curious. It’s supposed to help you see underwater, I was wondering if it hindered your sight above it.”

“No, I can see you just fine.” I say. “So what’s in all of those?” I motion with a finger towards one of the IV bags.

Jenny touches the red one. “Blood.” The blueish one is a chemical that is neutralizing your nervous system and immune system so you don’t reject the change or any of the chemicals. Two of the clear bags are a mixture of chemicals that are infused with the DNA, the third is just nutrients to keep your body going.”

“And the tubes? Can they come out? They hurt and they aren’t helping me breathe.”

“They’re not for breathing. Those are going down into your lungs. It’s set on a timer to release a gaseous form of whatever the cocktail is that they’re pumping into you. That way it’s absorbed directly into your cells.”

“Oh.”

I jump when the door suddenly opens and a man walks in. He’s carrying a tray of five syringes, and his cold calculating gaze fixes on me, sizing me up.

“Can I help you?” Jenny asks.

“I am to administer these to the subject,” the man says. His voice is heavily accented. “You were informed of this, yes?”

“Of course, I’m sorry, I lost track time and thought you were coming later.” Jenny removes the restraint from my wrist and slides a hand underneath me. “Roll over,” she tells me as she twists my body onto my side, so that I’m facing away from them. My feet feel thin as they flop over and I know they probably barely resemble feet. Jenny pushes my head down against the bed. “Straighten out and stay very still,” she commands. I obey, startled by her tone. The man snaps his gloves as he puts them on. I wonder if he did in on purpose to make me nervous. It works. He begins to poke and prod along my spine.

“What are you doing?” I twist to try and see.

Jenny pushes my head back down. “Stay still,” she repeats. “It’ll be okay.” The man pokes around at the bottom of my spine and I try to remain still. I’m given no warning when he sticks the needle into the base of my tailbone. The pain is intense and I stiffen, a whimper escaping me. The pressure grows unbearable before he finally removes the needle. I try to roll back over, but Jenny holds me still. “You’re not done yet.” The man’s gloved finger returns. He presses into the small of my back and has barely moved his hand when the needle goes in. I gasp at the sudden sharp pain. I can feel the bruise forming as he withdraws the syringe. Another is injected into the middle of my spine, the fourth between my shoulder blades.

“One more,” Jenny says. “Stay perfectly still okay?” I chew my lip and remain silent. There’s no finger first to give me warning to the needle and when the sharp point slides into my spine, at the base of my neck, I can’t help but cry out. My teeth slice through my lip as I bite it against the painful pressure in my neck. It feels like forever, though in reality it was probably only a couple of seconds, before the needle is removed from my skin. Footsteps and the sound of the door shutting signal the man’s departure.

Jenny carefully rolls me back over and restrains my wrist once more. She pulls her chair over and sits down. “You alright?”

I chew my lip again and fight back tears. All of this is getting to be too much and I just want to curl up in a fetal position and sob until it all goes away. “What was that stuff?”

“Spinal fluid,” Jenny answers. She brushes more hair off my face. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you beforehand.”

“I’m not going to have to do that again am I?”

“Yes, once more, forty-eight hours in, but I don’t think there will be as many needles next time.”

“I’ve always hated needles,” I whisper. “I want to go home.”

Jenny hesitates. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” She suggests. “You’re going to need it.” She doesn’t wait for a reply as she stands and leaves the room, turning the light off as she does. I rest my head against my shoulder, unable to do much else, and try to drift off to sleep.

***

I awaken with jaw pains. My entire lower jaw aches as though I’d bashed it off a rock or something. I open my mouth and move my jaw around, trying to relieve the pressure. There’s a loud pop and suddenly one side of my jaw slumps sideways. I shriek, but more from fear than pain. What’s going on? More than anything I wish I could see my jaw right now, or at least reach up and feel around to try and figure out what’s going on. A thread of saliva trails down the side of my chin. I try to lick it away and scrape my tongue against my tooth, a very sharp tooth. There’s another pop and my lower jaw becomes dislocated entirely. Incapable of closing my mouth, I close my eyes instead. Now that its hanging free and fully dislocated, the pain in my jaw grows. My gums are aching too.

I turn to face the mirror, hoping someone is watching on the other side. “At is appeing?” I lisp.

It takes a few seconds for the door to open and a boy who looks to be about eighteen or nineteen walks out. I’m glad for the thin sheet covering my body. He grabs a metal cookie tray and sets it on the bed before leaning over me to release my one arm from its restraints. Keeping a firm grip on my wrist, he drags my arm over and ties it off next to my other arm. The position is uncomfortable on my shoulder and I roll onto my side. I’m assuming that’s what he wanted. He slides one hand under my head and lifts, sliding the tray underneath and releasing my head. With my jaw the way it is, I’m unable to stop the drool leaking from my mouth. It begins to pool on the tray and I realize its purpose and am instantly offended. The boy turns without a word and walks back to the door.

“Heey!” I shout, the word garbled. “On’t eave ee like his!”

The boy pauses for a moment in the doorframe. “Shut up!” He snaps with a shake of his head. “Stupid fish.” Then he slams the door behind him.

My heart clenches. I’m barely into this transformation and I’m already being treated like a mindless beast. A stray tear slips down my cheek. I want to go home. Sophie, please come save me.

I lie there, in a pool of my own saliva, for who knows how long. The pain has dulled and now everything has numbed. I look up when the door opens and Jenny steps in. “Good morning sweetie, how are you-” she breaks off when she gets a good look at me. “Hey, who did this?”

“oiy,” I attempt, pointing at the mirror. “Ease elp.”

“Okay, we’ll fix this, just hang on okay?” She disappears into the room behind the mirror. When she comes back out, she’s carrying a towel and what looks like a mouth guard. She takes the tray out from under me, replaces it with the towel, and dumps it in the sink. Then she comes back and opens my mouth further. “I just want to take a look, okay? Wow, those came in nicely. Okay, I need you to try and bite down on this as hard as you can, okay?” She sticks the mouth guard between my teeth. It takes effort to close my jaw, but I manage to close my mouth around the guard. There’s sickening crack and slight pain as my jaw pops back into place.

“Ow, jeez, that was unpleasant,” I say, my words still slightly garbled.

“Can you close your mouth fully?” Jenny asks. I nod and comply.

“It feels a little weird though,” I state as I adjust to the strange feeling in my jaw. At least my speech has improved. “What happened?”

“Your fangs came in,” Jenny says. “That’s why your jaw was dislocated, so it could adjust to the new sizing of your teeth.”

“Really? I have fangs?” I open my mouth and try to feel them with my tongue. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“No, they’ve faded right now. Here, snarl at me.”

“Snarl?”

“Bare your teeth, like a dog would.”

I shrug, but curl my upper lip and try to look menacing. “Are they there?”

“No. But they were a few seconds ago, when your jaw was still dislocated. I wonder what made them fade.” I frown and try really hard. I think fangs would look kind of cool. They might not be so bad to have. I focus on my teeth. Please form. Suddenly my lower lip is poked painfully.

“Ow.” I open my mouth a little. “That hurt.”

“They look pretty cool,” Jenny comments. “Creepy, but cool.”

I nod, then shift uncomfortably on the bed. “I don’t suppose you would be allowed to let me out of these cuffs for a few minutes, would you? I really need to stretch.”

Jenny’s face falls. “I'm not supposed to remove the restraints unless you need to be rolled over or something, in which case I’m supposed to only remove one at a time and maintain total control over your free arm.”

“Oh,” I respond. “Could you at least move the restraints further down so I can sit up? These bars won’t let me slide them down the length of the bed to do it myself.”

“Yeah, that I can probably do,” she agrees. She removes the restraints, one at a time, and clips them behind the second bar of the bed, allowing me room to sit up, but she’d have to move them back again for me to lie down. I purposely keep my gaze away from my body, unwilling to see what thin mass of flesh is left of my feet.

There’s a sudden beeping noise, follow by a hissing sound. The tubes in my noise rattle slightly and then I'm choking. Coughing uncontrollably as I attempt to pull oxygen into my lung with no success.

Jenny grabs my arms. “Relax, it’ll be over in a couple seconds and you’ll be able to breathe again.” She’s right. The hissing noise stops and seconds later, I’m inhaling properly. I gasp in the process. “That’s the first time that’s happened while you’ve been awake, isn’t it?”

I nod. “Yes. How often does it happen?”

“Every three hours, on the hour,” Jenny replies. “I guess you could keep time with it. It’s eleven a.m. right now.”

“Eleven,” I whisper. “I wonder what time it is back home. I wonder what Sophie’s doing right now.”

“Mourning probably,” Jenny states. Her face suddenly goes ashen. “Oh my gosh, sweetie I am so sorry, I didn’t even think.”

I can’t help but sniffle at the thought. I can’t imagine how Sophie must feel. I hope she doesn’t blame herself, there’s no reason for it, but knowing her; she’d find some way to twist it and pin the blame on herself. “It’s okay,” I mumble. “I guess I just really miss her.”

“She’s your mother right?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your birth parents? If it’s not too personal to ask.”

“My father died when I was young,” I say. “My mother and Sophie used to be friends. Dear old mom has a successful modeling career. She was often away on business trips when I was little. When dad died, she would leave me with Sophie whenever she went away, which was often. As I got a little older, she stopped coming home as often, maybe once a year for a few days if I was lucky. I later found out that she’d transferred parental rights to Sophie. Sophie didn’t tell me when it happened because she didn’t want me to feel abandoned or unwanted. I love Sophie. She wanted me. Even when my own mother didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny says.

“I just keep thinking about her now. Sophie’s parents passed away before I was born and she was the only child of two only children. She has no living relatives and isn’t able to have kids. She loved me and now she’s going to be all by herself. And it’s my fault.”

“Honey, it’s not your fault,” Jenny says.

“I shouldn’t have gone. I should never have agreed to go on that excursion. It was a setup wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jenny admits.

I nod. “I knew. Deep down, something wasn’t right. There should have been more planning. And you don’t hire a teenaged photographer and want an excursion, you hire a photographer to take photos. There should have been a dive master. I shouldn’t have gone, but I wanted the money. Sophie’s birthday is in two weeks and had my eye on something nice.”

“What was it?” Jenny inquires.

“It was a necklace,” I answer. “A simple gold chain with a locket on it. There was a little dolphin hanging from the locket, Sophie loves dolphins. I was going to put a picture of the two of us inside it and get it engraved to say ‘the family I chose to love’. It’s what she always told me I was; the family she chose to love rather than the family she was born with.” More tears run down my cheeks. “I wanted her to know that’s what she is to me. Instead, the only thing she’ll get for her birthday is a ‘dead’ daughter, the last of her family. And it’s my fault.”

Jenny squeezes my knee. “I’m really sorry. This shouldn’t have happened. If they wanted a subject, they should have hired someone, or picked up an orphan off the street and given them the choice, at least this would be a better life than one on the streets. They should have picked someone who had something to gain, not someone who had everything to lose.”

“Part of me is glad it’s me because it means that someone else doesn’t have to suffer. And it might not be so bad if things were different. If I could still see Sophie and everyone here didn’t look at me like a mindless beast and treat me like one too.” I stare at my hands. “If things were different, I may have even agreed to it.” I reach my hand down and pull against the restraints to try to scratch an itch on my knee. I have really to wiggle around in the cuff to get it to slide a little further up my arm so that I can reach. “These things are a pain.”

“They’ll come off when you’re done changing, hang in there.”

“How far in am I? That scientist said it took sixty hours. How long have I been going through this?”

“Close to thirty-four hours now,” Jenny replies. “I’ve been warned that the more drastic changes should be starting any time now.”

“What’s next?” I ask. The scientist said the tail was last, that I would grow scales on my chest and gills first.

“Gills,” Jenny says. “Though they don’t normally open, so you can’t tell, but the brain activity scans did pick up discomfort around now. Actually, the gills are the first change that showed up as a discomfort, and the only thing that read actual pain was the tail, but it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“I hope not,” I whisper. I let my head fall backwards so I can stare at the ceiling. “Call me childish, but I’m so bored. There’s not much I can do but lie here and listen to the beeping of these machines when you’re not here, and talk to you when you are about things I want to forget about. And sleep, I can sleep, but I need help to sit up and lie down on my own. You could leave right now for the day and I’d be screwed. The only way anyone else here is going to bother letting me lie down is if the need me to in order for them to jab me with something or something.”

Jenny nods. “Maybe I’ll ask if I can bring a deck of cards in here or something tomorrow and maybe leave them with you so you can at least play solitaire.”

I raise an eyebrow and wave my hands a little. “Uh, I appreciate the offer, but how am I supposed to play anything like this?”

“That’s why I’d ask, see if you can be released for a bit, or at least have restraints with ties so they’re longer and give you a little free range with your hands,” Jenny explains. A little timer on her watch goes off and she glances at it.

“What’s that mean?” I ask.

“It’s my lunch break. I promised my son that I’d drive him to a friend’s house when I took my break. Will you be okay here on your own?”

I nod. “I’ll probably try and take a nap.”

“Alright.” Jenny adjusts my restraints so that I can lie down, bids me goodbye, and leaves me alone in the room. With the beeping machines. Beep. One, two, three. Beep. I sigh.