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Ashely doubles over, clutching at her stomach as a splatter of blood erupts from her mouth, staining the white porcelain sink red. She wipes a hand across her mouth and takes a shaking breath. She knows what’s happening, even if she doesn’t want to believe it.
The consent tingling of her skin, like fibre glass was scratching underneath the surface had been her first clue. Her inability to sleep; mind buzzing with a stream of angry white noise had been her second. Still, the progression had been slow enough, creeping up on her like the months of the year, that one day it had been spring and the next winter had arrived. Ashely had had no time to prepare, no time to understand what her body had been trying to tell her until it had been too late. Stupid girl.
When the consent dizzy spells had increased and the uncontrollable surge of rage had finally become unable to hide, she had gone to the doctor. The Doctor had put it down to PTSD. Brought on by her recent kidnapping. Just PTSD, he had reassured, sending her off with a bottle of pills and a pat on the thigh. Only Ashely had known the truth, even if she hadn’t wanted to believe it then. No running from it now she thinks.
Maybe in hindsight, Ashely should have known this was coming all along; there had been so many close calls on the island that it always seemed improbable that she would survive. She was after all the ditzy blonde, only good as eye candy. Validating the strength of the men around her as she flounders about helplessly in the world and hadn’t she played that role well. Because here is she again, the damsel in distress, only this time there isn’t anyone who can save her. It’s almost funny. Almost.
Another surge from the tempest in her body causes her to double over the sink again, a greyish liquid spewing from her throat. Blacken chucks of flesh get caught in her teeth as the river of bile pours out of her. Puking your guts out as never been more relevant. Her veins are throbbing beneath her once cream coloured skin, blue and black. Ashely looks down at her arms, watches through blurry blood shot eyes, as they rise up growing bigger by the second, threating to break through the skin. Her jaw throbs, the bones aching with a tension that sits and festers. She opens her mouth wide, shaking her head from side to side as she stretches and moves the muscles, in a distorted lioness roar.
There’s a swarm of wasps in her brain, stinging and persistent. She hunches her shoulders, rolling them instinctually, and shudders as she hears the first crack. She buckles, falling onto the tiled floor with a thump. Her face presses into the tiles, comforted by the coldness on her cheek and the slight relief it brings to her fever stricken skin. Ashely tries to lift herself back up, only to fall back to the floor when another sharp crack echoes in the small room. The pain is sharp and hot. Ashely lets out a guttural groan and rolls onto her back. It takes her a moment to register what is happening. Only fully understanding when she glances at her limbs jutting out in unnatural angles, arms and legs splayed out twitching and moving with every new sharp snap of sound. She’s literally breaking apart, bones snapping, limbs elongated and reshaping themselves. Her throat constricts, forcing her airways closed as it rearranges itself. Black sports being to appear in her vision as she writhes on the floor, gasping for the air she can longer reach.
It can’t end like this is all she can think. Ashely had once told Leon that she would never turn into one of those things, and even now as her veins finally grow too large for her skin to contain, tearing open her flesh and flooding the floor with a tidal wave of red, she holds true to that statement. Her body may change but her mind, she would keep her mind. She had to keep something. So Ashely shuts her eyes and absorbs the trauma, swallowing the pain and using it to fuel her desire. She recites the alphabet, her times table, thinks back on all the people who ever underestimated her and swears she will prove them wrong.
Ashely doesn’t know how long she lies there, retching her guts, bones snapping, blood pouring. It could have been minutes or years. But as suddenly as the change had claimed her, it lets her go. Her vision returns, body ceasing its spasms. The pain that had been raw and overwhelming dulls to no more than a memory. An afterthought.
Despite the transformation her body has gone through Ashely finds it easy to control. Reaching up an arm that’s longer than it should be, bent at on odd angle, she grasps at the edge of the sink, three fingers with claw like needles at their tips digging into the porcelain as she lifts herself up off the floor. Her legs, more spider like than human settle underneath her. When she looks into the mirror it is one from her darkest nightmares. She barely recognises herself. Her skin is a ghostly white; a deep purple hue has formed underneath her eyes, which have sunken further into her skull. The skin under them stretching down, like melted wax. Her irises are now a deep green, the whites of her eyes a sickening yellow. Her nose is barley there, just two slits either side for nostrils, her mouth is stretched wide, blood red lips at odd angles in a sideways grin, the fang like jagared teeth that now litter her gums are on constant display. Her expression a persistent sneer of a smile. Her hair, once the colour of sunshine has faded to a midnight black, she runs a hand threw it, its texture sharped and barbed like thrones, a few strands embed themselves in her fingers and it takes a sharp tug to free herself from it. It’s then she notices the sporadically patches of silver coloured scale like textures skin on her body and the veins now exposed, growing out of her like tumours of steal.
Ashely knows she should be more horrified by the reflection before her. There should be panic and fear, she should be crying. She doesn’t have the energy, her mind overtaken by the new vibration in her bones, the thrill of the buzz. Still, she opens her mouth to scream, if only to prove that she can. That she’s still in control. Her voice comes out like thunder an earthquake of sound. A guttural roar in the still of the night and she thinks in that moment that maybe she was never the damsel in distress, perhaps she has always been this dragon and now it's time to burn everything down.