Jason felt… weird.

  At first, he refused to believe it, but the reflection staring back at him from the water wasn’t his own. Instead, the reflection that looked back at him was of a rat-like creature with a thin and sinewy frame, its patchy gray fur clinging uselessly (and almost appearing as if it were about to fall off) to a bony body that looked malnourished as if it hadn't eaten in days, which was punctuated by the homeless-like attire that its body wore to protect itself. Its... uhh, his limbs were too long, with fingers tipped with dull, claw-like nails that resembled a lion's but at the same time looked humanoid, and when he stood upright, his back hunched slightly forward, and his posture was a bit awkward but nonetheless bipedal. Two black, glassy eyes stared back at him from the water while his snout twitched with irritation at the sudden frigid cold that swept through the whole forest.

  Jason took a shaky step back from the water’s edge, his limbs working sluggishly to move him as a piece of twig snapped underneath his leg. "Ugh," he groaned. The pads on his feet were surprisingly sensitive, and every twig or rock sent a jolt of discomfort up his legs. He looked down at his hands and flexed his elongated fingers, which resembled those of a human, but still, looking down at his arms, he had to admit that it felt weird.

  "I have to get home, but this is freaky. I don't want to scare anyone," he muttered, his voice a scratchy rasp that startled even him. After standing there for a while and shivering slightly from the cold, he eventually made up his mind. "Welp, I guess I'll just have to figure it out along the way." Turning around, he tried his best to walk without accidentally falling to the ground, grabbing his belongings as he went and putting them in his van before climbing into the driver’s seat and starting up the car.

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  Just to make sure, though, he checked the back of his van, along with the rest of the interior, before cleaning the whole thing with chlorine and wiping it off with a dirty rag. He then threw it, along with the blood-covered carpet, out of the car's window and finally drove off.

  The tires crunched on the gravel as Jason pulled onto the road, his elongated fingers gripping the wheel tightly. His heart thumped erratically in his chest with adrenaline, and every so often he would check the rearview mirror for any nearby cars, but there were none. Turning his van to the left side of the narrow, winding road, Jason forced himself to breathe in order to calm his nerves and to think clearly.

  He hadn’t thought much about what had happened to his body before he looked in the water, but now that he had seen it, it was impossible to forget. He tried not to glance in the rearview mirror, but he caught flickers of movement in it anyway. Whatever was happening to his body was very freaky, and when he got back home, he decided to have a proper examination of himself.

  Jason drove in silence, the only sounds coming from the rattling heater vents and the occasional hiss of wind slipping through the edges of the van's windows. The smell of chlorine lingered in the air, mixing unpleasantly with the earthy musk of wet fur and metal, which was made worse by his heightened senses, and eventually, he had to put on a mask in order to stop the coughing fit he was having. He tried not to think about the blood, or the rag, or how his fingers had trembled slightly while cleaning the van. He had to stay calm. Panicking wouldn't fix anything.