Demonic metamorphosis

For me, it all started on November 17th. One day I saw children with black markings on their faces playing at killing each other. Another day, my friend, sick with black spots, became violent with a taxi driver. Other cases emerged of people losing control, their black spots forming cryptic symbols.

It didn’t take long to figure out what was happening. One morning, we all woke up to the news that our country was now at war because another country had experimented with biological weapons on the population. I don’t understand politics or alliances very well, but what I do understand is that the population being experimented on was us, and the disease of the black spots, spread by mosquitoes, was surely one of those experiments.

It doesn’t really feel like a war. Aside from the fumigation trucks, the occasional military checkpoints, and the people with black spots being taken to quarantine, everything goes on as usual. But war would never let anyone be at peace.

Suddenly, I see a plane passing overhead, followed by a bright light in the sky. An enemy plane? How did it get here? Is that light a bomb? I know I must not look at it under any circumstances. I cover my eyes and turn away. Soon after, people start screaming. I open my eyes slightly to see if the light has passed. The sky is wrapped in a greenish-blue hue; the light is fading, but the terror hasn’t ended yet. Dark silhouettes are descending with parachutes into the city. Are they soldiers, right? Are they good or bad? They must have taken advantage of the light to make their descent. I have to hide. It’s not safe here.

I risk my life weaving through blinded cars, running to a public restroom and hiding in the disabled stall. Chaos roars outside. I send a message to my family about my situation, hoping this ends before my phone dies. I start to relax too much, feeling heavy, the fear has dropped my blood pressure again. I know I shouldn’t pass out here… well, if they find me and kill me, at least I wouldn’t even notice…

Suddenly, I find myself in a house. It feels familiar. There’s no one here, not in the next room, nor the next… how strange, the house has too many rooms, living rooms, and kitchens. This must be a dream, right? But it feels so real. I find a staircase, it looks like an emergency stairwell from a skyscraper. I don’t want to explore the rooms because I know I’d get lost. Better to descend to the bottom floor.

In front of me, an open door whose darkness swallows the light. My body tells me I shouldn’t be here. Something enters the back of my neck and makes its way toward my brain. I see memories flash by, some I didn’t even remember. As the “finger” digs through my brain like a worm burrowing through soil, it sees everything about me. After knowing me more than my own family, the finger withdraws.

I wake up with a jolt. Where am I? Still in the bathroom. How long was I asleep? Long enough for my phone to die. Outside, nothing is heard except a few car noises. I feel a hot itch on my neck; the bathroom mirror reveals the source of my irritation: a huge black spot, bigger than the ones my friend had, stretching from my jaw to my collarbone, accompanied by smaller spots forming nearby. Mosquitoes must have bitten me while I was unconscious.

I leave the bathroom and see, in the distance, lines of people, ambulances, and military trucks. Better that they don’t see my spots. I’d rather quarantine at home than in the military camp.

At my house, my family is relieved to see me. Poor cousin, he happened to visit us with his family at the worst possible time. I inform them that I’ve contracted the black spots disease and that I’ll be quarantining in my room. To avoid behaving erratically, I plan to sleep as much as possible. The good thing is my room has a bathroom, so I won’t have to go out much. Well, I’d better go to sleep because I feel a headache building up, and I hope this passes soon…

I feel peace. I see a light, it’s cold, I hear unfamiliar voices, everything is so confusing. Soon I fall asleep again. I see my parents; I feel loved. I grow up, go to school for the first time, and both my mother and I cry. I like school; I get along with everyone. I do very well in elementary school; my parents take me to the fair when I appear on the honor roll. I move on to middle school, make more friends, and win second place in the knowledge olympiad. I get accepted into the high school I wanted, and so do my friends. My childhood friend tells me she loves me, which makes me very happy because I’ve loved her too.

We enter the university we wanted, start living together, and get married. We get jobs at the company we dreamed of. Our first child is born. The work pays well, we live comfortably, and travel often. Then our other two children are born. We watch them grow into good people. Life speeds up more and more, but as long as I’m with my beloved wife, that’s the least of my worries. Our heads are only silver-haired; we’ve lived a good life. I have no regrets. I can leave in peace.

I wake up in a dark room, the headache greeting me. Where is my wife? And what are these spots covering my body?… Oh right, I went to sleep to quarantine and dreamed of my family, my friends, none of it was real… I miss my beloved, my life, what a cruel joke. I will go back to sleep, hoping to see them all again.

Again, I am reborn, now with another name, carving a different path in life, loving different people, and I wake up in my room, spotted, frightened, and devastated. I’m afraid to sleep again and dream another entire life, but I can’t help it. The only thing I can do is stare at the wall where I wrote my name and my circumstances, to remind myself who I am, because each dream makes me forget more and more.

These lives are too happy; they lack flavor. I indulge in excess, drugs, enlist in the army to kill, involve myself in crime. In each dream, I try to be the worst human being possible, just to dissolve the tedium that is the beauty of life. One day I realized my hands were scaly, small horns had emerged from my head, the itch on my back were tiny wings, and a tail. No one said anything to me, as if I were the only one capable of seeing it.

Returning to the life where I’m just a boy in quarantine, I hear chatter, it’s my family, they talk about how stressed they are because of the war, how the food is running out. They speak so fast it overwhelms me. I peek out; my mother is cutting her nails, my father is listening to the news, their mouths don’t move, and yet I can hear them. I panic and retreat to my room; the curtain rod falls, then the glass on my desk, ghosts? It’s too much for me, I just want to enjoy life again. I must go back to sleep.

Back to the body with wings, now fully formed. I soar through the sky with freedom. My horns and claws are sharp, my tail is strong, I can spit fire. Seeing the world burn beneath my flight is a pleasure I never imagined I would feel.

I wake up again, my family’s voices repeating my name with hostility. I peek to see what’s happening, they turn to look at me. My cousin approaches me, “No, no, it’s nothing, don’t worry, someone killed my daughter, but relax, stay locked in there.” I can hear their thoughts, they think it was me.

I go back to my room. Did I kill my niece? When? I’ve been asleep, I haven’t gone out! Why do they think it was me?! Things start falling in my room again. I try to calm myself, and the objects stop trembling, as if I can control them. I notice my hands are scaly; I can feel my wings, but no one else has seen them. I try to control my heart, pounding against my chest as if it wants to escape; I manage to calm it until it stops. Panic makes it beat again. It seems I can control my body completely. None of this can be real, I’m going insane, I need to sleep and return to reality, I don’t even know which reality that is, I just need to return to where I am myself.

I wake again, in my demonic body as always, wings, tail, horns, claws, all fully formed. I am in the room where I decided to quarantine. No chatter now, probably because between my teeth and claws lies the flesh and bones of those who were my family, I must have eaten them before waking. I know I’ve lost my humanity because I’ve lost everything, and yet, my sadness and horror are drowned out by a terrible sense of boredom. That was my family, just like the other thousands I enjoyed or ruined in my other lives. I have awakened to my new identity: I am a devil, and this realization spreads a huge smile across my face.

I leave the house to find a destroyed city, others like me soaring through skies lit by flames. The sight makes me laugh, don’t be greedy, I want to have fun too.

I tried many things with the survivors whose thoughts betrayed their location. With my mind, I made them explode like fireworks, I showed them my perfected fire breath, and I even drove them insane when I inserted my fingers into their heads.

After a few months, demons like me destroyed the world. Those who caused this apocalypse didn’t know what forces they were tampering with. They played at being gods and died like insects.

Now I float, very bored, in the cold, dark abyss of outer space. Fortunately, when I sleep, I can travel back to the house where it all began, that dreamlike house of infinite rooms. A magnificent idea occurred to me.

To kill the boredom, I will now be the one inhabiting the darkest room in that house, and it will be my finger that provokes the demonic metamorphosis of whoever reaches it.