Okay, you caught me. Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, etc. I bet it hooked you though, and I’m pretty sure an old English teacher of mine told me I needed one of those to start a story.

Luckily for this tale, and perhaps unluckily for me, my own life gave me a plot hook.

It would be a pretty sad story if it ended with me dying of a seizure on the linoleum floor of a diner at the ripe old age of 26. I didn’t lie to you though. On that ill-fated Monday, amid the chaos of a rapidly collapsing social order, I did die. At least, Charles Finch died. What rose out of his ashes, however, is what this story is really about. Buckle up kids, from here on out, its about to get weird.

xxxxx

Red. Everything was red. I was consumed by an ocean of swirling red eddies, pushing my grasping consciousness under tidal waves of crimson liquid. It forced itself down my throat, filled my lungs, bled from every orifice of my body as it simultaneously pushed back into me. All I could see was the red, and as its waves battered my fragile psyche, I could only feel crimson. Heat, pain, anger, violence. They swirled within me, overflowing what I could feel and challenging all I knew. I was lost in that fire that consumed my body and soul. To put it mildly, my bad day had returned.

And yet, as I drowned in my own mind and my body was ravaged by this unknown terror, I felt something else. I saw a pattern in the blood-red ocean around me. The deep crimson of agony and violence was mixing with something lighter, a pure vermillion that highlighted the crests of waves. In the foam of the frothing waters, I saw bubbles of pink and rose. For a moment I achieved clarity, a purpose amid my downing consciousness. I was being consumed, and I somehow knew that this ocean would truly kill me if I let it. It would turn me into something monstrous, as hateful and angry as the crimson abyss. In that realization I found a sliver of commitment.

Fuck that.

There was more to this crimson tide than hate and pain, and I opened up my mind, lowered the mental drawbridge into my soul that had been keeping the red from swallowing me whole. As I felt the water fill every part of me, I accepted all that it was. Red was renowned as the color of violence and bloodshed, of fire and pain, but also of passion. The heat of fire was also the heat of love, of creativity, instinct, and art. Blood poured from open wounds, but it also bound the living together. In accepting the darkness, I found the light, and suddenly the ocean calmed. It still raged around me, but I was suddenly buoyed by its currents, rather than pushed under. I held no control over the crimson sea, but it recognized me as its own, and let me navigate its currents at my leisure.

As my mind calmed, so did the fire that raged within my body. I knew that I remained separate, caught within this internal realm of the unconscious, but the link back to myself felt…secure, where it once raged with heat and pain. I traced its path, and it led down from my floating body into the abyss. Taken a deep breath, I plunged myself under the waves and pulled myself down its chain into the depths. I didn’t know how deep it went, or if I would run out of metaphysical air in this liminal space, but I knew I had to wake up. The only path, at least at the moment, was down.

I pulled, clawed, and fought my way down the chain as the pressure increased in the bloody depths. I felt a terrible pounding in my skull, but I pressed further. One more link of the chain, I repeated over and over in my mind. Finally, I saw the sea floor ahead of me, and the anchor to the link. As I pulled myself closer, I made out a figure holding onto the chain. Even as I reached the anchor the details were indistinct, and I couldn’t make out this mysterious figure within my mind. Only when my feet rested on the seabed did the figure turn and place one hand, red as the water around us, over mine. I looked into her eyes, black as the night with irises of brilliant ruby, and a predator’s smile pulled up her lips. She pulled herself close to me, pressed her body up against mine, and kissed me. From between her lips, I felt life-giving air push into my lungs, and I felt my chest heave as I finally breathed.

I opened my eyes, and the crimson ocean was gone. In its place was a blinding white light, pointed directly into my eyes. It felt like all my senses were tingling with atrophy; I was numb to the world, insensate almost, but that light was just really fucking bright. Having just clawed myself from the edge of oblivion, I was annoyed enough by this floodlight in my face that I found the strength to turn my head from its light, and found myself locking eyes with a man clad head to toe in an operating gown, holding a scalpel inches from my face. Behind a surgical mask his eyes widened in what looked like fear, and he let out a remarkably high-pitched scream as the scalpel cluttered from his fingers. He scrambled out of my line of sight, and it occurred to me in my lethargy that, maybe, something odd was going on.

I heard a door slam and the pounding of feet on tile, and I took stock of the unusual circumstances of my surroundings. I still felt like I could barely move, with pins and needles pricking static throughout the muscles of my body, but I found I could swivel my head from side to side. I was in a morgue, with a wall to my right of metal doors that bodies would be stored in. I seemed to be laying down on my back, and to my left side was a tray covered in operating equipment: knives, bone saws and other instruments to cut apart bodies. Despite the metaphysical mind-fuck that I had just emerged from and the apparent terror of the man I had just watched flee the room, oddly enough it was the sight of those instruments of dismemberment that finally spurred me into the realization that I was in danger. Where once my muted heartbeat had been slow and steady, it suddenly picked up as my mind shrugged off its lassitude and began to run through the nightmare scenarios of my situation.

Did I die? Had they been just about to perform the autopsy? That was impossible, there was no way they could have made such a colossal mistake of sending me to a morgue if I was still alive. So then…was I a zombie? But my heart was beating and I can’t say brains felt all that appetizing at the moment, so…vampire? Revenant? Lich? Draugr? A rapid-fire train of nonsensical fantasy undead spun through my mind as my racing heart gradually restored feeling to my numb body below the neck. As it did, I begin to notice that things felt off somehow. I felt lighter somehow, my body not as heavy as I remembered, but there were these weights on my chest that simply hadn’t been there before. I noticed that I was laying up at a small angle, as if I were resting with a pillow under my upper back. Nothing made sense, and panic again began to set in. To top it all off, that fucking floodlight was still practically blinding me, and with a grunt of extreme effort, I swung a clumsy arm up and knocked it away. Good riddance.

But as my eyes thanked me for the relief I suddenly froze and looked up at my outstretched arm. It was…wrong. It wasn’t mine. It couldn’t be mine. For one thing, my skin wasn’t crimson red! Though the shade was the first (literal) red flag, as I brought my hand closer to my face, I saw my nails had transformed into black talons, sprouting several inches from my fingertips into wicked, razor-sharp points. The meat-hooks on my fingers were juxtaposed by my hands themselves. They were smaller than I remembered, dainty even, with delicate fingers and unblemished skin. I caught my outstretched arm with my other hand, which sure enough matched its opposite’s crimson hue. Only, as I touched my skin with one of the talons, they suddenly retracted into my fingertips, leaving a small opening where my nails had once been.

“What the hell?” I rasped out through a dry mouth, but then immediately froze, a hand coming to rest on my throat. While the voice that had echoed in the quiet space had been rough and quiet, it was unmistakably not my voice. If that wasn’t bad enough, the voice was quite decidedly feminine.

Suddenly I had a terrible inkling of what those weights on my chest were, and I slowly looked down my body for the first time. Just below my collarbone, two mounds of crimson flesh spread across my chest, large enough that in their flattened state that they spilled over the sides of my chest. Each was topped with a black nipple, which were rapidly hardening in the cool air of the morgue. I had breasts! In my shocked amazement I somehow found this hysterical, and an unconscious giggle erupted from my mouth that sent the mounds jiggling in a way that I would have found immensely erotic if I wasn’t half out of my mind. I more than just had breasts; I was stacked. They were bigger than any I had seen outside porn, and would have completely dwarfed Faith’s comparatively small chest.

Faith!

I immediately forced myself to set up, pushing back a wave of nausea as this new, strange body protested the rapid movement. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten about Faith. I had been so caught up in my metaphysical misery and my morbid surroundings I had completely forgotten about my partner. Was she safe? Was she alright? With shaky legs I moved to set my feet on the ground and stand. The instant my legs held my full weight they buckled, and I found myself falling claws first into the tile floor. In the second it took to fall, however, I felt some sort of muscle in my back flex and then extend in rapid speed. As my hands caught my weight on the floor before I face planted, I heard simultaneous cracks to my sides as further weight was taken off my trembling arms. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two more talons, twice the size of those on my hands, punching holes into the tile at my sides. My eyes tracked their origin, and saw a thin, fleshy membrane of leathery skin forming a wide sheet to either side of my body. Bony protrusions ran from the tops of the membranes and between the large flaps of skin, leading to the talons currently embedded in the ground.

It took me a second to put them image together, but I recognized them for what they had to be: massive wings shaped like those of a bat, in the same red shade as the rest of my body. I scrambled to get my feet under me and the wings retracted from the ground, and I realized the origin of the odd bundle beneath my body from earlier. The wings were affixed to my back, and as I straightened up into a steadier standing position, I let that odd muscle expand fully, watching as the wings extended to each side of me, easily reaching from one side of the room to the other. They were terrifying and brutal, each easily ten feet wide and tipped with terrible claws that I found I could flex like fingers from the wingtips.

My mind reeled as I took in the absurd sight and felt the power of the new muscles along my shoulder blades. “Red skin,” I muttered in that odd husky voice. “Talons. Bat wings. Massive tits. I look like a succ…” My voice trailed off as my hands whipped to the top of my head, already knowing in my heart what they would find. Large curling horns like those of a ram sprouted from the top of my head and parted the long dark hair that I now recognized falling around my face and onto my shoulders. Twisting my body around and looking down past where my wings connected to my back, I saw the base of a tail above a pair of truly bubbly ass cheeks.

Though my mind still raced in a state of half panic, the rational part of me kicked in, and I admitted to myself what had to have happened. Somehow, impossibly, I had been transformed into a physical rendition of a succubus of legend. I even saw a little spade head on the end of the tail subconsciously flicking about my feet. Still looking down, I noted that I wasn’t exactly a perfect image of the stereotypical succubus. Despite what had been a fleeting fear when I recognized the femininity of this body, I still had all my old equipment between my legs. Well, I still had a dick, but one that was bright red and looked rather larger than my old flaccid length. There was something else off about it, but I shook myself and tried to get my mind back on track. I still needed to find Faith.

With stumbling steps that slowly gained strength, I staggered to the door and yanked on the handle. The sturdy metal frame wrenched from its hinges with a rusty shriek and the door clattered to the floor behind me, but I was already moving through the opening. I’d deal with the body, the tits, the wings, and the inhuman strength later; right now, I needed to get the fuck out of here. I focused on the one important goal in my upturned life: find Faith. As soon as I entered the hallway, however, I realized that it might not be as easy an accomplishment as I might have hoped.

In two organized lines on either side of the hallway, black-clad soldiers kneeled with rifles in hand, all centered on the bright red target of my naked body. I immediately jumped in shock and raised my hands high in the air. “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot, I just want to get out of here!” I yelled. As I raised up my hands, however, my wings followed, fanning out wide in the hallway in both directions. I don’t know which soldier it was that shot first, but in his honest defense, if I saw a literal demon walk out of a morgue and stretch out talon-tipped wings in my general direction, I probably would have lit the fucker up too. When I saw that first muzzle flash, I was sure that this new, freaky life that had been granted to me would quickly come to an end, but as I closed my eyes in anticipation, I only felt a thud against my shoulder, as if someone had lightly punched me. My eyes snapped open and watched as the crumpled brass and lead of a bullet was flattened against the unmarked skin of my shoulder, before falling to the ground. I met the eyes of the man who fired, and again I saw the widening of terror that I had seen in the medical examiner from earlier. From somewhere behind the firing line, I heard a panicked scream, “Open Fire!”

Immediately both firing lines opened up on me. Hundreds of bullets slammed into my body, and no matter what fantastic protection this body offered, their impact quickly began to be painful. As I felt one shot shatter against a closed eyelid my head rocked back in pain, and it only got worse as the rest began to aim for my face in response. I raised my arms to block their fire, but as the unrelenting fire continued my wings surrounded me in a protective cocoon, shielding the vulnerable parts of my body from the worst of the shots. I huddled there, feeling like a football team was tackling against my protective bubble.

Deep within, underneath the pain and the fear, I felt anger stir. It reminded me of the crashing crimson waves of my dreams, all-consuming and terrible. I suddenly wanted to roar out my fury on the world. I wanted to butcher these weaklings where they stood. I wanted to open their bodies with taloned hands and string them up by their own entrails. I wanted to stand atop a mound of their corpses and force the world to witness the perfection of my form. I wanted…I wanted….

I saw Faith before me. I saw her diminutive form next to mine, arms crossed beneath her breasts and a disappointed frown on her face. I saw how her face would twist in horror and fear if I killed these men, if I let this anger out on the world. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t bear to see that look in her eyes. From within my sphere of safety, I looked down at my hands. Blood-red, tipped with ebony claws that twitched with impending violence. I saw the monster that I had become. And then I felt the anger drain from me, and be replaced by a crushing fear and sadness. What was I? What had I become? I was a history teacher for God’s sake! I was as mild-mannered as they came, the stereotypical image of the soft academic in a tweed jacket and elbow patches. And now I was this monstrous thing, lost in a feminine and confusing body that somehow craved violence and bloodshed.

I let out a sob as I felt my identity and life crumble around me, the reality of the situation finally setting in. I couldn’t ever go home. I was a freak. I would probably be locked in a lab for the rest of my life if these soldiers didn’t just find a way to kill me now. I felt as my cheeks became wet with tears, and for the first time since I was a child, I let all the anguish, fear, and sadness out and just sobbed into my hands. The rain of fire continued against my wings, only letting up as I heard the click of reloading magazines. I even felt the blast of an explosive go off near me, but my cocoon was barely rocked. I didn’t care anymore, I just wanted it all to be over with.

I don’t know how long that went on for until I heard an authoritative cry of “Cease fire!” from somewhere down the hallway. The thud of fists against my wings petered out and finally stopped, and soon the room was dead silent save for the wracking sounds of my sobs.

From beyond my protective shell, I heard the click of heels on the tile, growing steady louder in the silence until they stopped just next to me. I choked down my next sob and sniffed through a runny nose, waiting as a pregnant paused filled the air. Finally, I felt a light tapping on my wing. “Excuse me, Mr. Finch?” The sound of my old name roused me from my misery, and I slightly lowered the wings from their protective position, letting my eyes peek through the gap at this newcomer.

A woman stood before me in a crisp black suit, some sort of ID lanyard hanging off the breast pocket. Her brown hair was done up in a severe bun, and piercing dark eyes peered down at me from an angular face. I could see that one hand remained at her side, just under her suit jacket. Ready to pull a sidearm on the freak I imagine. Despite the severity of her features, she did not seem particular aggressive, and in the moment, I thought that she looked a little embarrassed. I wiped my cheeks and looked up at her still extended hand from my sitting position. Nervously swallowing, I fully retracted my wings and slowly reached out to take her hand, noting the subtle shift of the soldiers down the hall at my movement. I laid my hand in hers, claws retracted, and at the moment of contact I saw her cheeks darken in a subconscious blush and her eyes dart down to my now revealed nakedness before she schooled her expression to the same professional severity. She gently pulled me to my feet.

“I’m terribly sorry about that, Mr. Finch,” she started as we finally faced each other eye to eye. “Things around here have been rather tense the last few days, and when we heard that the demon corpse in our basement was up and moving, the quick response team arrived before those with any sense could.” She cast a baleful eye at the line of soldiers behind us, and I heard more uncomfortable shifting.

“Where,” I started, then sniffed and cleared my throat as my voice broke on the word, “Where am I? What’s going on? Who are you?”

“You’re in a CDC morgue attached to national headquarters here in Atlanta. I think your second question will take more than a single sentence to answer, but I’m Special Agent Riley. I’m here with an emergency task force from Homeland Security.” She responded with a smirk, still holding onto my hand. I swear I felt her thumb brushing tiny circles against mine.

“Badge?” I managed to croak out as the enormity of what she said came crashing down on me. I might have been in deep shit, but I still knew to ask for ID from anyone claiming to being from the government.

She cocked an eyebrow before shrugging, letting go of my hand to reach into her jacket, producing a badge and attached ID. As I pretended to examine the admittedly very official looking ID, my mind tried to digest what she had said. The National Headquarters of the CDC was a good several hundred miles from my home in Maryland. For them to have transported me all the way out here meant that whatever had happened to me was important enough to risk spreading whatever pathogen I had caught in transport. Then again, I can’t imagine any virus that could have turned me into a fucking succubus, so maybe they just wanted to study my remains, possible consequences be damned.