Fiction

The Change
by Charles Richard Laing

Craig Arnold's alarm clock sounded at precisely 5:45 AM. It pulled him out of a bizarre dream. Craig never remembered his dreams, and this was no different. The details seemed to fade away the instant he opened his eyes. There was something about water and...

Craig tried to recall more, but he came up blank. The nightmare went wherever lost dreams went in the cold light of day. The teeth-jarring alarm, however, was a constant. It continued to jangle, and would do so until he showed signs of consciousness. Craig reluctantly forced his eyes to open. He rolled over. Then, with a grunt of displeasure, he reached out to silence the racket. He slapped at the clock with his right flipper. This sent it crashing to the floor. Blessed silence ensued. With great satisfaction Craig shut his eyes and tried to steal a few extra seconds of sleep.

Then it hit him. He bolted to an upright position and stared at his hands. Or rather at where his hands had been before he had fallen asleep. When he retired for the evening he did so with two arms, two hands, and ten fingers. Now, however, he stared in utter disbelief at a pair of large pink flippers. He tried to move them and they slapped together like those of a trained seal he had once seen at an aquarium. It sounded like thunder in the tiny bedroom.

Craig swallowed the scream that welled up in his throat. Now was not the time to panic. He had to stay calm. He could deal with this.

He had a sudden urge to see himself in the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Kicking away the sheets, he rolling out of bed...

...And flopped to the floor. During the night his legs had also been transformed. They had fused together into a single streamlined appendage like the tail of a mythical mermaid. Or -- to use the correct term -- merman.

Still on the floor, Craig struggled across his apartment in a strange half-crawl, half-waddle that strained every muscle in his new body. Luckily for him all the doors in his apartment were open. The thought of how he was supposed to turn a doorknob gave him fits. He decided to address that little problem when it came up, and not a moment before.

With maximum effort he managed to drag himself into the bathroom. Staring into the glass he got his first look at his new body.

Dear God, he thought. How did my skin get so dry?

Crawling into the shower stall, he was able to turn on the cold water full blast by using his teeth. Frigid salt water rained down on him. All the tension of the morning seemed to melt away beneath the icy cold stream. After twenty minutes he felt ready for a hearty breakfast. Unfortunately, nothing in the refrigerator appealed to him. It all seemed so cold. It all seemed so dead.

He decided instead to get an early start on his morning commute. Perhaps catch something on the way.

Catch something on the way? Where did that thought come from?

When he reached the front door of his apartment Craig was pleased to see the front door had mysteriously vanished in the night. The thought of doorknobs was still intimidating. Crawling on his belly he made his way toward the elevator. He greeted several of his neighbors on the way. They too had changed overnight. They all piled into the elevator. Ted Fleming pressed the button with his nose.

The elevator stopped on the third floor. Craig crawled out with the others. They all hobbled to an open window, crawled out it, then disappeared. When it was Craig's turn he stuck his head out and looked around. The familiar scene of the street where he had lived for the past five years had vanished. All Craig could see was water. Water water everywhere. The entire city had been flooded.

Suddenly everything made sense. Craig used his powerful flippers to pull himself over the sill, and then with surprising grace he dove into the dark sea. Everything seemed more natural in the water.

How different it was from the time everyone woke up with wings. That had been a disaster. This was so much better.

Letting his instincts take over, Craig turned and started paddling uptown. If he left now, he reasoned, he wouldn't get caught in all that rush hour traffic.