Day One Hundred & Eighty-Three, July 1st, 2024

Hi-ho and hello.

So…I’ve decided that each day will share a form of art on the daily from day one of July to the 18th and likely be sporadic afterword depending on the reception and feedback. We’ll see.

Short Story

By: M. R. Vega

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Melinda woke to silence.

An utterly stagnant and dreary silence with an utter stench lingering that immediately brought on a wretching in her throat. Her body convulsed and shot upright from the still placid home of huddled sheets and piled serapes dropping from her coughing, thrashing chest and shoulders. She grabs for the water on her night stand, fumbling and knocking it onto a stack of old manuscripts, coughs with another thrashing and irritably clenches at her fists while stomping to the bathroom with the now empty cup.

She flips the light on and is stupefied, lambasted by the horror that’s staring back at her. It couldn’t be, she thought, it can’t be, she told herself. Muttering in an incoherent clicking and gurgling of what was her mouth.

Melinda Josie Tronlin had happened to find herself staring back at what was but an alien. It’s head near bulbous, Melinda’s eyes now the size of tea plates, slits for a nose and strange suction like appendages that continued to get stuck to what had become her. She put her arms on the counter, holding her shaking body up, sobbing in odd whelping barks. She shook and shook her head, clenched her eyes shut praying this was something else, something of a nightmare, of a horror in a mind that must be breaking. This couldn’t be, she thought. But then, she was a student, and a pensive one, she halted her quivering and convulsing, shaking body. She needed to be still.

To listen and sense what she could. There was an odd sensation on her legs that now looked more like cricket legs, e melded chicken, cricket hybrid with small, pretty feathers draped down on the sides. She bent over to feel. It tickled and felt as though she would cough if she didn’t stop touching the feathers. She stood up quickly and looked at her chest and arms, her arms and hands more tentacle and smooth muscle like, she thought of falic things and shook through, trying to shake them back to her strong toned self. The body she’d worked so hard to have after her asshole husband cheated. Dragging his d*** through every open hole of the town.

And she’d worked her self near dead these last four years, for what? She stomped her hoof like feet down and grunted angrily at the mirror angrily tapping what she assumed were nails on the tile. She could smell herself, it was repulsing, a filth that sunk into the mouth or the slit and hooks that had become her mouth. She chittered, is this my laugh? She thought for a moment and heard a heavy thumping and creaking motion in the living room.

She slowly opened the bathroom door enough that she could peer down the staircase to see if Jason was heading upstairs. She heard the faucet of the kitchen sink and took the opportunity to run to her room. She closed it, locked it and found an empty corner of her closet and crouched till she heard nothing but the hum of the A/C kicking on.

She hesitated at the door, unsure of everything at the moment but knew her gun crazed twat of a man would likely shoot her. How can she…the front door closed loudly and she heard his crumby truck door creak open and sighed, perhaps it was click, or clucking but she was relieved for a moment until she burst out the into the hallway and realized there were cameras everywhere, his paranoid ass had cameras at every door. She took a gasp her a deafening rapport and fell silently, heavily to the floor with a sickening folding thud and stilled.

Fin