I met grace at my first college party.

  I don’t know how it happened. Perhaps it was something I ate and didn’t know the ingredients. Maybe somebody ate something with peanuts and then touched something I touched. I don’t really know.

  I do know that I felt the tingling, my throat starting to close. I was slow to react to it, probably because of the beer that I had been served. I passed out en route to the bathroom and woke up to this beautiful, angelic creature leaning over me, holding my epipen.

  Grace has hair dyed in alternating neon blue and purple streaks and snake bites. She wears a lot of leather and silk, all black, and loves horror movies. She’s majoring in accounting.

  My mother would be appalled. My father would give me the “Marilyn vs. Jackie” lecture.

  I was going to bring her home for Christmas.

  My hands are shaking. I grip the sink to hold them steady. I'm...not exactly hungry, but my body is lacking in something. At least the muscle spasms in my tail of stopped.

  My tail. Banded in dark gray stripes running up its length and the sharp, bladelike point at the tip. It swings when I walk, knows where to position itself to keep my balance. It’s not bleeding anymore.

  None of my skin is. The only reminders of the first trip through the Monsterizer are dark, discolored smudges that otherwise look and feel like normal skin.

  Looking up at my distorted reflection, I notice something odd, and it isn’t the vertical slit pupils or protruding fangs, or even the dark hair growing in where my dishwater blond fell out. I place my hand vertically in front of my nose and wink one eye, and then the other, watching my vision jump from side to side.

  My right eye works. It hasn’t in years, not since lightning came through the television.

  I have brown eyes. Grace loves them. She loves how warm and normal they are, how looking into them makes her know that I ccan be her rock, her anchor, after a lifetime of instability.

  The match to my left eye is so blue it’s nearly white, and the match to my right eye is so dark gray it’s nearly black, with a distinctive silver, starlike mark.

  They changed my eyes. They fixed my vision but they changed my eyes.

  And the scar running up my right arm. It faded away completely within two years of the lightning strike, a benefit of youth, but they brought it back. Unlike the other scars, or what used to be scars, this one is raised and ridged, like the burn scar it used to be, dark gray against my fair skin.

  I run my fingers along the unfamiliar contours of my chest, down the abs I didn’t have before, towards my pelvis. About the only benefit I ever got from my father’s hyperathletic genes was the inability to get fat, but my dietary needs largely means muscle isn’t happening, either. I’m toned in muscles I didn’t know I had before.

  They took my body hair, but they returned my foreskin. I don’t even want to know what the voting roster looked like there.

  My own reflection makes me nauseous. I don’t even want to look at it.

  They took me to a room and told me it’s mine. My name is on the door, under a bronze star, “D. Eldredge.” It looks like a rundown motel room, with threadbare carpets and yellow lights making a slight whine. The bathroom is serviceable, but not exactly first class, not with the touch of mold in the corners. The toiletries were nicer than I generally buy for myself, but I don’t think they’re luxury brands.

  Hard to say, though, since I don’t even recognize the script they’re written in.

  In the living area, there is a small table and a single folding chair. On top of the table is a gift basket with a note on it that says “From your fans.” There’s some name-brand clothes and luxury items, none of which have labels I can read but I can feel the quality.

  I change quickly into a pair of black jeans and a white sweatshirt. Whoever designed these socks knew how to make them toeclaw-proof, but getting them on without snagging is a challenge. The sneakers, white and black, feel like the most high-end shoes I’ve ever owned, but I don’t put them on yet.

  Instead, I crawl onto the bed, recessed into the wall with a rolling shutter door like a pod hotel. Even the blankets and bedding are hotel-like, clean but worn, and there’s a shelf with a device charger in the wall and a small swivel television tucked against the inner wall.

  Flopping on my back doesn’t work. I can feel it, the new appendage, pinned beneath me, like rolling onto my arm. I flip to my left side, staring at the far wall, the small kitchenette and the cans of onion soup stacked on top of a minifridge with cold drinks and chilled snacks.

  I feel...empty, drained. If you’ve ever had the good fortune of eating a bunk of junk food with little nutritional value, you feel full, but your body knows it’s low on fuel. I feel…kind of like that.

  But I don’t want to eat or drink what they give me. It’s dangerous if I can’t read the labels, and…it might be taken as a sign of acceptance.

  My head agrees with that. My stomach…does not.

  The first time they put me in the box, it hurt. It was…scary. I could feel my humanity peeling away with my skin. But the second time? I…enjoyed it. It felt good, fun. The thought turns my stomach. There’s a lingering thought at the back of my brain, that maybe…maybe it won’t be so bad the next time.

  But no. I don’t want there to be a next time. I need to find an exit.

  I step outside of the room, into the hall of similar names on doors.

  E. Vostok.

  W. Ranchman.

  R. Ranchman.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  S. Bateman.

  And more.

  I can hear the sound of construction behind some. I want to be surprised at how late, but honestly I don’t know what time it is.

  The hallway opens up…into the soundstage. Alright, I keep walking across the room into the next hall, passing by props and costuming, offices, and meeting rooms.

  And…back into the soundstage.

  Rhian is seated on a director’s chair, watching the television face of an H.R. Geiger monitor woman as two bovine-like woman perform on the set. She looks up at me as I pass, eyes facing forward, in a straight line.

  And back into the soundstage.

  Rhian looks up at me again, a clipboard balanced on her knee.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, sounding concerned. “It’s pretty normal to have a hard time sleeping the first night, but you should be resting. Do you want some pillows and blankets brought out so you can take a nap out here?”

  The effect is…unsettlingly like the Queen of England offering to make me a pallet behind her throne and nap there while she holds court.

  “No, I…” I mumble, looking askance and tugging on my tail. “I want to go home.”

  “I can walk you back to your room,” she offers.

  “No, I…I want to leave.”

  “Well, you might enjoy the brain challenge tomorrow, then, but you need to rest up for it.”

  My vision spins. My chest feels tight. Am I…again? I don’t have an epipen this time.

  I can feel the tug of my tail all the way into my spine. It isn’t right. Humans are apes, not monkeys. We don’t have tails, or claws, and…my jaws hurt where the new incisors grew in.

  What are they doing to me?

  “You alright, champ?” she asks, stepping delicately out of her chair. She places her clawed palm against my forehead, like she’s feeling for fever, and then grabs my hands with a start. “Oh, sweetie, you’re shaking.”

  She’s…blue. It’s not makeup, she’s blue. Her claws are dark navy and her otherwise humanoid hands have an extra knuckle in each finger, making them super nimble and bendy.

  “I don’t want to be here,” I murmur, closing my eyes to stop the room from swaying.

  I can feel my claws scraping the ground, the muscles moving in my tail, the weight of it against my back. Rhian smells like blueberries, real and not synthetic perfume.

  “Medical?” she asks, putting one of her hands to her headset as she holds tight to me with the other. “Yeah, another one.”

  “I don’t want to be a contestant, I want to go home. Take this…take this off me.” I pull at my tail as if trying to pull it loose.

  There’s a sting in my neck and a cold numbness travels down the right side of my body.

  “What did you…do?” I ask, feeling my numbness reach my feet and knees, making me go limp.

  “Shhh,” she whispers, helping me to support me as the fish-faced stagehand lays out some pillows and blankets in front of the monitor woman. “You’re going to take a little nap, and then you’re going to be spectacular on stage tomorrow."

  I want to tell her I can’t, that I won’t, but my face doesn’t work. I’m lowered onto the blankets, my head placed on a pillow. Rhian settles in behind me, rubbing my shoulder and back as the monitor woman leans over to put her face in view.

  If this is sleep paralysis, it is the most awful feeling of helplessness. I can’t move anything, except maybe a small twitch or whimper, which prompts Rhian to whisper sweet platitudes in my ear as she rubs my back. Sometimes I can see the monitor and the soundstage, watching contestants across the monitor’s face.

  I want so badly to move my arms, to sit up, to turn my head. I scream out for Grace to wake me up, but she isn't there and no one can hear me.

  Slowly, life comes back to my limbs. It starts in my tail, a sudden, powerful jerk that jars my nervous system. I can open my eyes and the first thing I see and smell...are the brand new shoes from the gift basket.

  I sit up and grab my neck. There's a smear of dried blood on my fingers.

  "Good morning sleepy head," Rhian says benevolently, taking a cross-legged seat beside me, holding a plate of eggs and bacon, which makes me retch.

  Covering my mouth and nose, I push the plate away from me, bracing myself for hives.

  "Oh, this?" Rhian asks, spearing a slice of bacon and offering it to me on a fork. "It's safe. The audience voted to remove your food sensitivies."

  Unable to speak, I shake my head and clamor out of the makeshift bed.

  Shrugging, Rhian helps herself to the plate.

  "It's been awhile for you, yeah?" she asks, swallowing some eggs. "If you're not ready to risk it, we can get you something from Catering. What do you normally eat for breakfast?"

  "I...don't want anything from you," I tell her, all to aware of the hunger gnawing at my insides.

  "You can't not eat," she growls. "Gluten-free cereal? Plain grits? Fruit? There must be something you want."

  I find myself staring down at the bacon, feeling a longing I don't recognize. The way the fat runs with grease, the smell of the char that normally makes me sick.

  Am I...craving meat?

  Rhian puts a hand to her headset.

  "I have something to take care of. You've got about an hour before the brain challenge. Go meet the other contestants. Relax for a bit, and take care of yourself."

  She takes the plate with her as she goes, eating on the go. I glance at the snack table, laden with a continental breakfast.