DAY 1

It happened in the shower without warning, the worst feeling of vertigo I had ever experienced. A shrill ringing pierced my ears. Gasping in shock I reached for the wall as my legs buckled. I collapsed into the tub, unable to move as hot water and shampoo streamed over my face. My gasps turned to gurgles as my mouth filled with water. Was I having a stroke? The tub was starting to fill with water, my foot must have stepped on the plug when I fell.

Vainly I pawed at the shower curtain, unable to make my hands grab it. The water level crept up over my ears, but the ringing was only getting louder. As the seconds passed my ability to move went with it and my arms fell limp and useless even before the water covered my head and I couldn't see anything anymore. Red agony pulsed in the corners of my vision, building into an unending howl that slowly sputtered out into a wheeze when I had no more air left to scream with. My hands touched something thin and slick, though I couldn't see anything. It must be the shower curtain. I grabbed it with desperation and tried to pull myself up out of the water, but instead it tore and I fell out onto something soft.

I lay on the floor unable to do anything other than cough the liquid out. Something covered my eyes, blinding me, and it squished and oozed hot liquid all over my face as I tore it off. I rubbed the slime out of my eyes and saw that it wasn't my shower curtain it was something else. All I could think of was the greasy, meaty, congealed mess left in a pan after cooking meat, with fresh blood dripping onto it where it had torn the skin on my forehead. Greenish, blackish, blood. The room was gloomy, but I could still see that I wasn't lying on my bath mat, I wasn't in my bathroom at all. Somehow I was in a cave.

“Wh…” I could barely moan as I struggled to my feet. Around me, others were doing the same. We had been in bags, or pods, half buried in the ground. In stunned shock I watched as the others awoke and tore or chewed their way out of the pods and onto the ground. Ugly creatures with lumpy and brutish figures. Not humans, though maybe some alien's nightmare version as described by someone who only had secondhand accounts of how humans looked. Two arms, two legs, two eyes, for the most part. More than half of the pods had three...well maybe people wouldn't be the right word, occupants. Rare ones had five or six. They tore and bit at each other as much as anything else. Seeing it revolted me, but also made me aware of how hungry I was. Some that I thought were separate were conjoined in one way or another. Not many, maybe one out of ten, but some were separate torsos sharing legs, or with three arms or two heads, or four legs.

I looked down at myself, and imagined I were better formed than these lumpy half-done creatures but I had the same stumpy fingers with thick claws instead of fingernails, and the same oddly proportioned and genderless body. My skin was a bit orange with patches of browns and greens. The others were much the same, though some had more of one colour or another.

Was this hell? I hadn't exactly gone out of my way to be pious or anything but surely I hadn't done anything to deserve to be turned into an imp or demon or whatever the hell this was. My hands traced up to my face. Not my familiar face, the jaw was too wide, much too wide, and my nose was a vague lump. My teeth were sharp and jagged, and before I could stop myself they were pressing into the meat of my thumb. I was so hungry.

With a snarl I ripped my hand out of my mouth, unintentionally slapping a creature that had been creeping up behind me. He yelped as my claw scratched his eye and jerked back, exposing his throat and I lunged. My sharklike teeth sank into his neck and sweet blood filled my mouth. We fell to the ground and he squealed and gurgled as I tore chunks out of his neck and chest. Around me, the others were doing the same. Was this how addicts felt? Horrified at what they were doing but unable to stop because it just felt so good?

Some time later we survivors crawled our way out of the gore. Maybe half of us were left, about sixty at most. We all stumbled around and stared with bulbous eyes, shocked but for the moment satiated.

“Whaa. What?” I tried again. My voice sounded weird. A few creatures nearby turned to look at me. One grunted a few times and then shook himself like a dog, sending out a spray of gore. Maybe I was just dazed, but it seemed like he was growing at least a few inches taller as I watched. He, or it, whichever word worked best, reached out and started clawing the air. I turned to look and saw a tunnel leading away. It called to me.

“Out.” He grunted and it spread like fire across the group. Most didn't get the word right, some didn't have lips or had eaten their own tongues, but the feeling was right even if it was closer to barking than speaking. We shambled towards the exit with lurching steps. My whole body itched and burned and it felt so good to be moving.

The cave opened into a twisted maze of tunnels. We all dispersed through the tunnels. I ended up in a dead end. This tunnel seemed to have caved in, something none of the others seemed to be in danger of. I rubbed my fingers over the wall. It was mostly smooth, but covered with streaks and swirls.

My head was pounding, my vision pounding in time with my heartbeat. An overwhelming sense that something was wrong clawed at the back of my mind. Was I dying, drowning, and all this was just some screwed up fantasy of my last few seconds? I whimpered in pain and pressed my head into the cool dirt Memories flashed through my head. The time I fell out of a tree as a kid, the first time I crashed my bike, the aching emptiness of my first heartbreak, the rejection letter from the college, the first time “Insufficient funds” flashed across a card reader . Every moment of pain and fear and loneliness rushed through me. A memory whispered to me, and I could feel the hand of a ghost on my shoulder.

"Hey, kiddo. It'll be fine."

"I want to go home." I looked up and saw an afterimage of a hallway superimposed over the tunnel. A figure kneeled over me, indistinct and flickering. Focusing on him sent waves of pain through my head. A swirling blur hid his features, every so often flickering into focus.

"It's just for a little while. I spent the summer here when I was your age. It was scary at first, but then it was really fun. Here, I've got something for you."

He pulled a cord out of his pocket, and then a green, folding, military compass. Just like the one he carried, but newer, without the scuffed paint.

"When you're feeling lost, this will help you find your way back" Outside, a car honked. He sighed and stood up, holding a hand out to me. I reached for him but the memory was fragmenting. The headache increased as I tried to hold onto the memory, until I was sure I'd be bleeding from my eyes.

The hallway, and my dad, slipped away, leaving me alone. I only managed to keep one thing, the compass. I could see it in my hand, but my fingers passed right through it if I wasn't careful. When I let it go, it would float in the corner of my vision no matter how I turned or moved.

My stomach rumbled, I was starving. Mixed in with it all was a need to move, to leave, to get out. I dragged myself along the wall, following the others as they stumbled outwards.

The mob spilled out of the cave and into a forested area. I fell to the ground and rubbed my face into the grass and dirt. Bits of drying blood and skin flaked off. Around me the others were doing the same, or rubbing themselves against trees. My thought from earlier had been right, they were growing. We were growing. Skin stretched and even tore as muscles and bones twisted and bulged. It only lasted a few minutes but we were left larger, stronger, more evolved. I rolled onto my back and held by hands up towards the night sky. My fingers were longer, more developed. The stars were vibrant and pulsing in a rainbow of colours. Maybe this was a really bad drug trip. Or it was hell and I had also been slipped some LSD or something. Eternal damnation and drugs probably weren't mutually exclusive.

In addition to being all kinds of shining and shimmering colours, the stars made unfamiliar patterns. I didn't recognize any of the constellations, and there were what seemed to be five or six small moons, but I was having trouble focusing on them.

“Wake up.” I repeated it a few times. Nothing happened so I sat up. The others were looking less stunned but mostly still confused. Some were stuffing handfuls of grass into their mouths, others were gnawing on tree branches. I stood up and grabbed a tree branch myself. It was crunchy and a bit too dry to call it good, but I only chewed enough to pull it off the tree. I needed something in my hands to keep myself centered. This was all a bit too much to process. I had been in the shower and then woke up in a cave with a bunch of goblins. The thought made me pause for a moment, clearer than any of the others so far. I stopped chewing on the branch. Goblins. After the growth spurt they were recognizable.

It was nice to have a name to put on it. I gnawed the shoots off my branch as I thought about it. I was a goblin. How? Why? If this was my life flashing before my eyes, why would my brain waste its last moments of life imagining this? My club was ready in pretty short order and I clutched it protectively when I felt the hunger pangs starting again. Some of the others were starting to fight again, circling each other and growling.

“Hey.” I held my club up, wary of being rushed.

“Hey?” a few of them asked, stopping their squabbling to look at me.

“Do you remember?”

“Eat.” They stared blankly at me.

“Who are you?” They were edging closer to me, having found a common target for the moment. Did they remember who they are? Were they all the same as me, confused and trying to communicate through a brain that felt too small? I was going to ask again but one lunged at me. I swung my club up and he ran right into it, the jagged end going right into his mouth. He bit off the tip but went sprawling onto the ground. I started smashing the club into him. After a few good hits I was panting as much from hunger as exhaustion. This new body wasn't very strong.

“Eat.” I stumbled back from his body, and the crowd surged forwards. The first one to grab onto him started losing fingers as the others closed in and started trying to get a mouthful. I joined them, grabbing his leg and ripping out a thick chunk of flesh.

After that we wandered. None of the others seemed to have really noticed that we had just murdered and eaten one of us a few minutes ago. Or maybe they just didn't care. I thought we were walking aimlessly, but it felt like something was drawing us in. I sniffed the breeze and there was something. A hint of a sweet smell in the air. Within a few minutes we had found the berry bushes and were stuffing handfuls of wild blueberries and twigs into our mouths. I dragged the tip of my club across the ground as I wandered aimlessly. None of the others had a club, even the ones who were trying futilely to get squirrels out of trees. After a moment of looking around I gathered a handful of rocks. I dropped the club for a few seconds and started throwing rocks at the squirrels. None of them were even close, anything requiring dexterity was probably beyond me. Would snares be better? Did I even remember how to make a snare? It didn't seem likely that I'd find any wire out here, and I had no idea what I'd use instead. It had been a long time since summer camp.

I spun around slowly a few times, trying to see everything. Where even was here? The trees and plants and squirrels seemed normal enough to what I had grown up with. Were there cities out there? Was everyone a goblin? Did only certain people get turned into goblins or was I going to have an impromptu high school reunion out here?

Scraping sounds drew my attention. A short distance away a group of about a dozen of the others were starting to dig. They were shoving the dirt into their mouths as much as they were pushing it behind them. It was pretty interesting how fast they were going, and also how they didn't seem to be hitting any practical limits on how much dirt and rocks they could eat. In short order they'd cleared out a hole deep enough that they were hidden. I walked over to the edge and looked in.

"Why?"

The diggers barely noticed me. Continuing to shovel dirt into their mouths. It called to me, the safety of the tunnel, the deep, the dark. Step by step I forced myself back. I wasn't going to let these feelings, these instincts, win.

The others started drifting in. Some carried handfuls of berries, some carried branches or handfuls of rocks. The sky was brightening by the time everyone else had crawled into this new burrow. For a few minutes I was alone, listening to the bird song start up.

None of the others seemed to be aware the same way as me. Most seemed to be able to speak or at least grunt appropriately, some could put two words together, but that seemed to be about it. Would I become like them? My head was fuzzy, but it seemed to be getting clearer as time went on even if I had the same basic urges as the others. I really wanted to crawl into the hole and sleep, so just to cling to something that felt like myself I stayed out here, wandering the trees. The light was getting painfully bright now, starting to sear my eyes like the worst hangover. I picked a tree at random and dug my claws into it. Carefully I carved my name, my birth date, and address into the bark and then collapsed to the ground below, using my arms to hide my eyes from the sun.