She gave him a hopeful smile. Dave wished he believed it.When he left her office, his skin sounded like it was creaking.
#
That morning was the worst it had ever been.
When he'd first come round from sleep, his mind had been full of the usual fog. Then he'd moved himself in bed beneath the covers.
And his entire body felt like it had been chucked into a blender.
A paroxysm of agony, like a raging fire, blazed all through his body from head to foot, through every nerve ending. Worst of all was that he couldn't move a muscle. His limbs were like dumbbells. He enjoyed pumping iron, but this...it was like trying to lift Everest.
He grunted and groaned, straining to move for all he was worth, sweat coursing throughout his body, but nothing seemed to want to work. It was like it was inert, lifeless.
He strained and strained, and eventually like something had popped loose, he managed to stagger upwards in bed.
His breathing was heavy now, and his body felt wringing wet, which didn't do the soreness any good. Mind you, his mind quickly forgot about pain because he had just seen something that made him sick to his stomach.
The scaly ridges were all over his naked chest, completely covering them and looking red raw. He touched them with a scaly hand, and fire burned his skin.
He wanted to speak, but nothing would come out. Instead, his throat felt dry, and his chest felt tight.
Acting on instinct, he touched his back, and he felt more of the scaly ridges. The bloody thing had spread, spread all over his...
He touched his face. He screamed.
Flinging off his covers, he leapt out of bed and scrambled to his bathroom. He couldn't run fast, his skin felt too tight and sore, and his limbs still felt sluggish, but his fear managed to keep him moving.
Arriving in the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. The beginnings of tears prickled at his eyes.
His face was covered in the ridges. All over. His nose looked bent out of shape, and his lips were covered with strange whorls.
A horrible thought seared across his brain, and, taking a deep breath, he opened up the front of his boxers. What he saw there made him retch and rush to the toilet, where he chucked his guts up until nothing more could come out.
Then, he heard the laughter behind him like the soughing of branches. And he could smell something really heady and potent now. A foresty, earthy, herbally smell. He knew, he knew what he would see before he'd even turned around.
He could make out now, in the daylight, that her eyes were a very dark brown, as was the small bob of hair she had. Her arms were across her chest again. Her mouth was set in a rigid, triumphant sneer.
"Letting Nature take its course, Dave?" she said, in that lilting voice of hers. Except it sounded funny today - sort of creaky.
Dave didn't know what to do or say at first. He felt something, though. It was an anger of Biblical proportions.
"What...what have you done...to me?" He pointed an accusatory finger at her, then reeled in shock when he saw it. It looked very...bony and twisty. He also saw that the colour of his skin seemed to be changing. It was turning a kind of browny-grey.
She just laughed in that dry, creaky voice of hers and gave him a cheeky, impudent wink before legging it from the room.
Roaring with rage, Dave got to his feet. He ignored the pain in his limbs, ignored the creaking sound he was making, ignored the sudden thirst that had come on him for water, he just ran after her, his thoughts consumed with a barbaric wrath.
He shambled down the stairs and heard the patio door slide open in the living room.
"You ain't...getting away...you...cow," he muttered. Why was his throat so dry? Oh God, I'm so thirsty...From my fingers to my toes...
His feet made it to the patio door, and he threw himself out into the garden. There she was stood, on the lawn, with her arms crossed and another triumphant smile on her face. She winked at him again.
"Yaaaaaah," he managed and started to run across the lawn towards her.
Except he didn't get far.
As soon as it touched the grass, his right leg no longer wanted to move. He looked down. For some reason, it looked like his foot had sort of bled into the ground and become attached to it. He couldn't budge it one inch. He looked down at his other foot and saw exactly the same frightening development had happened there as well.
In fact, now he thought about it, he could feel his toes sinking into the earth of the ground and imbedding themselves in there, wet mud slavering over his feet. Then his arms jerked upwards with a rush of burning pain as if of their own accord. He wanted to scream, but it lodged in his throat while his arms just stayed raised to the sky, like antennae.
And his fingers...They weren't fingers anymore. Fingers don't have green things sprouting out of them. The scream still wouldn't come. Not that it mattered because his body then started to twist and contort and straighten all at the same time, and as it did, there was this horrible creaking and cracking and snapping sound, and his head felt like his neck was swallowing it up.
He tried once more to scream but suddenly realised he didn't have lips. Soon, he didn't have to worry about making any noise anyway because his face had melted away entirely and all about him was darkness. And he couldn't move at all.
The woman came over to him. She patted what would have been his shoulder once. "It's lovely, isn't it? To be at one with Nature". She pecked a kiss on what was once his neck, and he could feel the soft moistness of it, but that was all he could do. He heard her footsteps pattering away. They sounded like branches snapping.
#
"What happened to the original owner, again?" asked Mrs. Cleverly.
The estate agent gave her a suave, patented grin. "Oh, don't worry about that. Nobody knows what happened to him, just up and vanished one day. It means, of course, that it already comes fully furnished". The estate agent beamed and moved his hand over the living room furniture like a seduction.
Mrs. Cleverly wrinkled her nose. It was all a bit laddish for her taste. She looked out of the patio and at the tree on the lawn.
"Nice garden. Has possibilities. What a nice tree. Be good for shade in summer. Oak, isn't it?"
The estate agent shrugged. "I wouldn't know, but yes, it is a nice garden, isn't it?"
Suddenly Mrs. Cleverly felt a tugging at her hand, and before she knew it, her cocker spaniel rushed out of her grip, through the patio door, and on to the grass, its lead trailing behind it.
"Buddy!" yelled Mrs. Cleverly. She gave an embarrassed look at the estate agent. "Sorry about that. We haven't had him long; otherwise, I'd have left him at home".
The estate agent gave a genial shrug. "Dogs," he said as if that was explanation enough. "But you could see how the garden would be good for Buddy, wouldn't you?"
Buddy, meanwhile, padded over to the tree and sniffed it. Then, letting out a little yelp, he cocked up his leg and emptied the contents of his little bladder all over its lower trunk.
"Buddy!" yelled Mrs. Cleverly.
The estate agent let out a customer service laugh.
And if they heard what they thought sounded like a moaning noise, they just assumed it was the wind blowing through the branches and the leaves rustling. It was only a tree, after all.
THE END
