Page 85 of Solivagant

JOSIAH

I woke up screaming.

Everything was getting worse.

My jaw ached. My teeth ached. My fingers and toes ached. My lower back was on fire, just like my blood. But the worst pain of all was over the front of my skull, and down my spine.

Tusks tried to give me water. I didn’t want it.

I dared to touch my head where the bumps had formed, and instantly regretted it. They were bigger now. Harder. There was something beneath the skin, pulling it so tight it was almost ready to burst from the pressure.

The pain was so bad that my empty stomach twisted and bile rose up my throat. I couldn’t turn my head fast or far enough to expel it, and it ended up over my lips and cheek.

Tusks wiped the mess away with a wet shirt. But it wasn’t bile, at least not entirely. The shirt came away red. I was vomiting blood.

I tried to shift. Tried to sit up. A blinding pain shot up from the base of my spine. I roared in agony and turned onto my side, only to accidentally hit one of the bumps on my head against the ground. The pain turned my vision white.

More vomit. More blood. My stomach clenched and jolted, tearing up my insides just so I had more to expel.

Had I been stabbed? Was there a knife in the base of my spine? I was almost too afraid to check. But the sensation increased.

My fingers trembled as I reached behind me. The bumps of my spine had grown, forming lumps under the skin that increased in size the further down my hand travelled.

When I touched over the denim at the very base, my vision whited out again. There was another lump under the fabric, a far bigger one. More blood churned up my throat and splattered into the grass.

The fucking lump moved.

Something was coiled and writhing beneath my skin. I screamed as I gripped at the fabric, putting more pressure on it and increasing the pain, but I didn’t care. I needed it out.

The denim tore. My skin tore along with it.

It burst out of me. Thin, and slick with my blood. The cold air stung like a blade that traveled up through the bone.

It were longer than I expected, thrashing about in the corner of my vision and jolting my whole spine with every movement as it flicked blood over the walls of the tent. It was still fucking connected to me.

I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes again, I was on my back. The pain in my head had reached a peak, but the pain in my back had eased.

Tusks was gently dabbing my face with a wet shirt. Still right by my side. Still looking at me with so much concern.

Something had come out of me.

My chest seized in a panic as I felt something move near my thigh. I turned quickly, twisting uncomfortably to look behind me, only to see… a tail.

That was definitely a tail.

The skin was no longer ripped, no longer bloody, even though the fabric surrounding it was.

I had a tail. Why did I have a tail?

I reached for the bumps over my forehead and hissed as my fingers made contact. They’d grown too, and threatened to break through the skin at any moment. Were they… horns? I was growing horns. And I had a tail. Like him.

My vision was blurry as I turned my gaze on him.

“Did… did you do this?”

His ears folded back, guilt filled his expression.