Form

The dim lights hummed furiously in the girl’s small garage. It was remarkably empty, since the machine’s manual had said that she would need a decently large space for this; the garage was probably the biggest spot in her house that she could just move everything out of on a whim. The girl was standing over the machine, evidently nothing more than a grey metal box with wires trailing from it. The wires connected to electrodes placed about the girl’s form. She was rereading the manual that she had set on the top of the machine.

She flipped the manual closed and looked towards the machine’s face. “Alright, I should have done everything correctly,” she muttered, reaching for a switch hidden within the tangle of wires. “Here we go.”

She flipped the switch and was immediately seized by a jolt of electricity. It ended quickly, subsiding into a soft but powerful thrum of energy periodically pulsing through her. Stepping towards the center of the room, she tried to steady her breathing. She wasn’t exactly sure what this was supposed to be like; most descriptions of the process that she had been able to find were frustratingly vague. Hopefully this was right and she wasn’t about to electrocute herself.

After an agonizing period of waiting, she felt a bright warmth in her core, spreading throughout her body with each beat of her heart. She felt her bones rattling, her muscles loosening, her flesh beginning to stretch and warp. An accompanying sense of euphoria quickly followed, bringing a toothy grin to her face. Yes, she reassured herself, this seems right. Ravenously she began pulling at her skin, peeling it off with glee as blood poured from her new wounds. Wet tearing sounds joined the humming of the lights and the whirring of the machine. Soon they were accompanied by the snapping of bones and the girl’s agonized screams, the melodious cacophony of joyful suffering filling the empty garage.

The girl dug her fingers into the flesh of her left wrist, pulling a blood vessel out and adding more red to the puddle forming on the floor. Her painful cries did nothing to dampen the euphoric smile spread across her face. She pulled all of the veins from her hand, leaving her left arm a wonderful mess of viscera and quivering matter. Laboriously she reached behind her, her left arm’s motor function miraculously unimpaired as she dug into her back, grasping her shoulder blade from underneath.

“Won’t be needing this anymore,” she forced through her mangled throat, which had been torn to shreds at some point. She couldn’t exactly remember when; the euphoria of tearing her body apart was blending the moments together. She pulled.

An awful creaking sound was drowned out by the girl’s shrieks of pain as she pulled her shoulder blade from her, followed by a sharp crunch as it finally came free, pouring blood down her back. Her shrieks calmed into ragged breaths that she could somehow still take despite the state of her trachea. A rhythmic gurgling sound came from her mouth as she laughed.

She grabbed at her chest, pushing her fingers easily into the flesh, more like liquid than a solid. She threaded her fingers into her ribcage, the anticipation and excitement overriding the agony, letting her laugh harder and harder as she began to pull. Several terrible cracks could be heard, but they were miraculously not the sounds of her ribs breaking off; instead, her sternum was being torn in twain.

As the bone gave way, awful squelching began as she tore her chest open, viscera spraying across the room. Her chest cavity was exposed now, her heart pumping regularly, unbothered by the wonderful catastrophe that was befalling its owner.

The girl’s tearing and screaming slowly died out as her body’s degeneration continued. Eventually the electronic whirrs and hums were once again all that was left, as the girl became a frothy puddle of blood submerging the electrodes that had once covered her.

All was still for several moments. Finally, a ripple shook through the puddle. Then another. And another. Until the puddle was violently oscillating, undulating and pulsating with energy. A white halo appeared at the center, growing brighter as the puddle’s movement grew more violent.

A hand pushed its way from the puddle, glowing with white light as the blood dripped from its surface. The long, spindly arm placed its palm against the floor. Soon, another joined it, together lifting something from the puddle. Finally, she emerged, gasping as she broke through to the surface.

As she pulled herself from the puddle, it shrank as if being used up. Once she had fully emerged, the puddle had disappeared, leaving the electrodes lying dejected on the floor.

She looked at herself. Her body was slender and graceful, made of a warm white light that felt amazing. She was dripping white hot ichor, the drops falling to the floor and evaporating with a hiss. Her skin was littered with eyes, which she could open if she so wished. And her wings! Oh, her wings, feathered and beautiful, powerful enough to create great gales if she so pleased. It was so freeing, this warmth and freedom.

Looking down at herself again, the girl smiled.