Chapter 3- Transformation

I snapped out of it mid fall, like a fog had suddenly been cleared from my mind. A blood-curdling scream tore through my throat as I scrunched myself up into the fetal position.

What the hell am I doing? Why on Earth would I jump, and in front of Emory? I’m going to die!

The feeling of impending doom grew the closer I got to the water- which was pretty fast considering I was going at terminal velocity off of a hundred foot cliff in a dress and heels. I braced for impact as my body plunged into the freezing cold waters. My face and skin stung as the water met each other, like when you cannonball into a swimming pool. The stinging only lasted for a second before subsiding.

Okay, I survived the initial fall. If I can get to the surface fast enough, maybe I won’t die from hypothermia.

The moonlight illuminated what was under the water well (like when you wake up and check your phone at three am bright well), which was weird and also good because I could see how far I was from the surface, but also bad because I could see how far I was from the surface. Since I was traveling at such a high velocity while falling, it propelled me deeper into the water after making contact. The surface was really far away, my muscles were aching, and my oxygen supply was running dangerously low, which meant a really low chance of survival. I fought the tiredness and forced my burning muscles to swim upward. The intense urge to breathe in had taken over, my lungs burning from the lack of oxygen and pent up carbon. Stars started to flood my vision as I refused to listen to my body’s demands. In my venture to get to the surface, I ended up making some pretty good progress, but my body gave out. Black flooded my vision and my muscles stopped responding to me. My airway opened and water rushed up my nostrils.

My chest stopped burning and then… I could breathe.

My eyes shot wide open as I breathed in again, through my nose, underwater. A strange sensation came from my chest, where it had been burning the most earlier. I looked down and breathed in yet again, gills. I let out a muffled laugh.

I must be dead.

A sharp pain shooting through my spine proved otherwise. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life, and I broke my femur when I was sixteen. My body jolted in the water, that felt like nothing now since my body seemingly acclimated to the ocean’s temperature, again. Then again. A muffled cry escaped my mouth. A similar pain to what I felt when I was sixteen caused me to look down at my legs. They looked like my regular legs, until another sharp jolt went through my body. Is this what getting struck by lightning repeatedly feels like?  The muscles in my legs seized underneath my skin. Then my toes snapped as they began to elongate and turn translucent.

Sweet Sally, my legs!

Little patches of scales started to grow on my legs as the skin on either leg started growing towards the other. The pain was out of this world and my vision blacked out more than once. My throat was on fire from all the screams I’d released while my body contorted in on itself. 

Within what felt like an eternity, but in reality was an agonizing minute, where my legs once were was a long, thick and scaly, green fish tail. I looked myself over again when all that was left were residual aches, and found small fin-like appendages on my elbows and sides of my upper arms. 

I twirled in the open water and felt strange with my new anatomy, but weirdly like I belonged here. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to really process the trauma my body had just gone through, as with the torrent of pain gone, my muscles were exhausted and wanted to rest. My mind had the same idea and my consciousness slipped away from me.