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You didn't know you could sweat this much and still have goosebumps. You roll up the sleeves on your sweater and use the movement to sneak a peek at Gene, seated to your left. Your glance confirms your suspicions--Gene's been starring at you the entire night. You ignore the stubborn itch on your scalp weave your fingers tightly together. You use the leverage to crack your knuckles, hoping the technique might help relieve some of the inexplicably painful pressure that's built behind them. Your attempt does the opposite, and the already tender shoot electric arcs of pain down your palm and into your wrist. Gene's eyes light up at the sound of your pained yelp. He asks how you're feeling, kneading his palm with an anxious fist. Between your throbbing headache and the pain you're presently in, you find that the attitude with which you ask "Why?" comes off as much less inviting than you'd anticipated. For the first time all night, Gene's eyes leave your figure and dart to the floor. You struggle to make out the details of his face through bleary, tear filled eyes. The silence is muddied with the ambient sounds of sleeping from "Paranormal Activity 2," a movie Gene insisted you'd love after your recommendation of "The Exorcist." Every second that passes feels like an eternity when you're in pain, and after what feels like 3 lifetimes Gene finally answers. He asks you to recall the incident at the corn maze, and you oblige, praying that the distraction will lessen the pain in your nailbeds.

He relays the event of that night to you in excruciating detail, emphasizing how sorry he felt for you and your friends. Your mind, muddled by the seemingly endless well of pain that your body has fallen into, fails to recognize that Gene couldn't possibly know the details he's just given you. The revelation hits you about thirty seconds later than it should have, but before you can question his knowledge of the incident, your spine erupts in an enormous blaze of pain. It feels like someone has just grabbed either end of your spine with their bare hands and begun to pull it apart like an old piece of taffy. The pain is so severe that your scream dies in your throat, surfacing instead as a sobbing, wet cough. A massive spasm rocks your body and throws you off of the couch and onto the carpeted floor. It feels like every muscle in your body is permanently contracting, pulling tighter and tighter against your thin frame like skin-deep boa constrictors. You hear Gene reassure that situation is under control before your ears are overtaken by a sharp ringing. The ringing feels maddeningly loud, reaching greater and greater volumes with every passing second. The noise crescendos with an abrupt "pop," and the whole world goes silent. You see Gene soundlessly moving the coffee table centered in the living room out and into the kitchen, clearing as large a space on the carpet as he can. He dashes back to your crumpled form, dragging you gently across the carpet to the middle of the room by the collar of your sweater. Amid the pain in your spine you feel a strange, tearing sensation at the base of your collar bone.

You try to crane your neck and identify the source, only to be met with an immediate and searing pain in your chest. You approach the burning area with a tentative hand, but stop well before you're able to reach it. Your eyes widen with horror as the blood welling at the base of your nailbeds comes into view. The tension breaks in one of these pools and spills crimson liquid down the length of your index finger. You wait for the blood to reach your knuckle and trail down the back of your hand, but its failure to do so is what alerts you to your lengthening digits. The nails atop them begin to push outwards painlessly, revealing the dark, curved claws growing beneath them. Your hands begin to swell as the skin blanketing your palm and lining your fingers begins to thicken, puffing outwards and darkening like the top layer of a lightly burned cake. At this point Gene's presence has completely escaped your mind, and you try to use your alien appendages to push yourself up. You manage to get to your knees before the burning in your chest returns with a vengeance, thrusting your forward and onto your hands with great force. A real scream escapes you this time as your sternum creaks audibly and pushes forward, barreling your chest and leaving you breathless. The stitches along your stomach tear with little resistance, soaking the bandages they're wrapped in with and staining the outermost layer of your sweater. You struggle to suck in air as your chest finalizes its movie, panting wildly as a tongue that feels too big for your mouth begins to impair your airway.

Rapidly accumulating saliva begins to pour down your chin, dripping slickly off of your face and onto the now matted carpet beneath you. You feel a pressure build beneath your teeth before your jaw disconnects almost entirely, an invisible hand guiding it forward with jerky yanks like an owner would its poorly trained dog. The top of your skull begins to follow suit, grinding wildly against itself as it struggles to press forward. You feel the cut above your eye re-open beneath your bandages, painting your left cheek with tight lines of blood. Eventually the competing segments of your skull match each other in length and come to a halt. The drool seeping out your mouth turns a dark red as it pools with the blood shed by your sharpening teeth, transforming the carpet into an impromptu murder scene. The pain in your spine has stopped, much to your relief, but the force driving your body apart hasn't stopped quite yet. You feel the arches of your feet cramp wildly, fighting against the zombie socks you'd worn to the date. The front of your socks wicks sponges the blood seeping from your toes, only to be torn by the larger set of savage, blackened claws surfacing from the flesh your nails used to occupy. The threads constituting your socks continue to stretch and snap as your feet lengthen, bloating much like your hands had earlier in the process.

The pain is offset by a brewing tension near your ears, drawing them further and further up the length of your skull and outwards into triangular disks above your head. Your hearing returns after a series of sharp popping sounds, and the chorus of your body's growing bones and stretching musculature meets your ears with sickening clarity. The smells of the apartment begin to fill your nose with scents you'd never experienced before--and then a scent that belonged to Gene. A moment of clarity alerts you to his presence as a shadow in the corner of the room. You can make out a quivering hand cupping his mouth, jittering softly against the tears wetting his cheeks. A staticky sensation floods your back and miscellaneous parts of your body as long, fine hairs begin to surface from beneath your skin. Your pains begin to subside as the hairs travel an unfamiliar appendage, ignoring only a large portion of your maw and the entirety of your chest. Your vision blurs beyond what your tears were capable of doing, and your feel your grip on consciousness loosening as your legs buckle. All at once, you collapse. You can feel your pants slow as darkness creeps in at the edges of your vision, and you surrender to the alluring numbness of sleep.