Theatrical Muse Reboot - #66 - What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you?
The first time I ever Changed.
You'll note I had no hesitation there. That's because there's no doubt in my mind. That night stands out in crystal clarity against all other moment in my life where I was scared out of my gourd--and let me tell you, there have been a lot. For a creature who can survive almost any blow and heal almost any wound in a ridiculous amount of time--'instantaneous' might be pushing it on that regard, but still--I've been far closer to death far more times than I am entirely comfortable with. Or even remotely comfortable with. So maybe it's with great irony that I consider a time where my life wasn't really actually in danger at all as the scariest thing that's ever happened to me.
It started with a fever. It was a pretty nasty fever, but I was seventeen so it wasn't quite nasty enough for even my NICU nurse of a mom to want to take me to the hospital. After all, she's got a lot of experience with nursing, so she kept me at home, kept me hydrated and pumped full of Tylenol. My eyeballs should have really been floating on the amount of analgesic and water she kept pouring down my throat, but I was so hot inside that I felt more like it was all getting converted to steam and I was my own personal sauna inside of my own skin. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my goddamn life. It almost would have been embarrassing if I hadn't been out of my mind with fever delirium.
Then there were the dreams. The dreams were horrific. THOSE haven't changed any but I've sort of gotten used to them; at the time I'd never had dreams like that before. Dreams of things coming through the walls, dreams of blood and death and things that kept coming true. I remember thinking I was going mad, I remember curled up in my bead with my mother rubbing her hand down my sweaty nasty back--a mother's love, I will never understand it--with my face in my hands bawling like a child because I had no idea what was going on and I felt like I was going to die. She kept telling me I wasn't going to in that calm nurse voice of hers and it turns out she was right, but I have to wonder sometimes if she knew that, or if she was just refusing to accept that I might be too sick to turn it around. Who knows.
Anyway, one night it all came to a head. Not under the full moon, because it turns out that part of being a werewolf is a load of crap. It was almost-full, waxing gibbous, they call it. The fever still hadn't broken and I got this ITCH, this BURNING under my skin that wouldn't go away. I drew welts up all along my arms, trying to scratch it out, and it just wouldn't work, so somehow I got it in my brain that what I really needed was the ocean. I still don't know what the crap I was thinking there, but my brainmeats were on fire so maybe I had a little leeway to work with. So I pried open the window to my bedroom and crawled out of it in my pajama pants and nothing else. Mind you my parents lived four or five miles from the beach but I wasn't going to let that stop me any. I hit the ground running and started tearing down back alleys and through yards westward as fast as I could go. My feet were a sincere mess by the time I hit the beach but that wasn't going to last long at all.
I can't really describe what came next. I barely remember it, even with my memory--it's all a blur of pain and salt air and impossibility. I ran into the waves until they knocked me over, and while they combed me over the sand my body flowed like the water around me. I was nine feet tall, I was four feet at the shoulder and with a tail. My senses ran the gamut, color flickering in and out of existence, and I began to see the spirits around me for what they were in flickers and spurts. At the end of it all I stood in the middlemost of my forms in the surf and the world would never be the same. It took me a while to figure out how to get back to human form. It took me longer to figure out what to tell my parents regarding why I was naked and five miles from home when they finally found me.