Lateral Move 2 by dorintf

Lateral Move 2

dorintf, Alligator, Chimera, Cow, Eagle, Heat, Hermaphrodite, Heterosexual, Horse, Lactation, Lion, Male, Mantis, Masturbation, Mating, Milk, Milking, Musk, Romance, Salamander, Shark, Slime, Snake, Spider, Squid, TF, Transformation, Transgender

Sorry this took so long. There were several plot points that were a nightmare and just had to be rewritten, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

If you enjoyed it ... let me know you enjoyed it!

"There's a big old goofy man

"Dancing with a big old goofy girl

"Ooh baby

"It's a big old goofy world."

--John Prine

Now

"This is it then?" Mark felt ridiculous. Dark alley. Man in trenchcoat. An unmarked package slipped from one hand to another. This was about as cliché as it got. All he needed was for flashing police lights to appear out of nowhere just before he made a mad dash into the darkness. His days of mad dashes were at least ten years in the past now. But perhaps he'd hop a fence? Duck behind a corner? Hold his breath as the pursuing officers passed him by, inexplicably failing to look in his direction as they hurried through the darkness, flashlights and barking dogs searching for the fugitive?

Mark wasn't buying drugs. He was a god damn scientist. He made them. Or used to make them. Not the narcotic kind, the kind that ...

Yeah, he thought to himself. The kind that ruined your wife's life.

"You do realize this is a terrible idea? One of the worst in history." The thin man seemed tired as he handed Mark the package. It was the kind of world-weariness you'd see in a general watching his men march into a battle in which they were expected to intentionally lose. "You're crossing the Rubicon here. Or riding into Jerusalem on a donkey."

"Jesus Christ," Mark exclaimed.

"That was his name, yes." The man smiled, his cheeks folding back like thin wet paper. "But I imagine you weren't recalling the name of the Divine. That was just a curse, right?"

"I was not, in fact, discovering religion just now standing in a dark alley like I was purchasing drugs, no." Where the hell was he going with this? As long as Mark had known his benefactor he had been like this. Even when he worked for him as an employee of a defense contractor with a ridiculous name, the thin man had always been amused by exchanges only he found funny in the sparse times Mark had interacted with him. "This will do it? Like I asked? Exactly like I asked?" Mark put extra emphasis on the word "exactly." There couldn't be any miscalculations. It had to be exactly as it was for her. That was the whole point.

The lanky man ignored the question, his face suddenly losing all its mirth, the joke only he found funny evaporating as disapproval spread across his visage like the dark wings of some bird of ill omen. He handed the package over, but wouldn't let go as Mark tried to take possession of it, forcing Mark to meet his eyes. "No." The tall man nodded at the package. "That is."

Mark sighed. Dealing with him was always like this. Mark would hate the man if he wasn't the only thing keeping he and his wife from living the rest of their short lives in a cell awaiting their execution. Or worse. Far, far worse. "'That is' what?"

"The curse. This, dear Winston, is the worst thing in the world." Mark didn't get whatever reference he was making, but for a second his shady benefactor seemed like he was attempting to be a human being. "Don't do it, doctor. You know this is a mistake."

Mark tore the package from the tall man's grip. "That's not your business. Or your concern. Not anymore." Mark slid the package into his pocket. He felt more relaxed, although he knew he shouldn't. This was the easy bit. What would come in the next few days was going to be the difficult part. "And it'll do exactly what it did ... the last time?"

"Yes. It'll ruin your life just as it did hers."

"I'll want an independent analysis. Not that I don't trust you, just--"

"Just you don't trust me. Smart man. I've already sent a sample to our mutual friend." The stranger held his hand up when Mark started to object. "Just a drop. Designed to dissolve a few days after it reaches her. Don't want any other people to suffer from this stupid idea."

Mark resisted the urge to tell him that technically the stupid idea was originally his. "Look ... Um ... I know you've been a tremendous help."

The stranger who wasn't a stranger lifted his brows, as if to ask if Mark was serious. The smirk threatened to make its return.

"I mean ... No, you haven't been just a help. You've been a god damn lifesaver. Literally. I'd be dead in some unmarked grave--at best--by now. And my wife would be in a worse way than that. Just ... Don't think I don't know that, okay? And with the clinic and everything? None of that would be possible without you. None of it. Just ..."

"Mind my own fucking business?" He gave a lupine smile that made Mark question for just a moment if he wasn't sampling his own "product." He knew of course that he wasn't.

"No no no. I just ..." Mark met the man's eyes. "I just have to do this. Okay? It's ... It's not fair for her." That wasn't the reason at all, but the man didn't need to know that. Mark was afraid if he knew the real reason, he wouldn't give him what he needed.

"I know. I do. But I also know that you and I are on the same page about what will probably happen next. I can keep them away from one of you. But if there are two of you flying around? The first time some Karen posts that shit on Facebook? That there are more than one of you? And that the government lied about killing the first one?" He paused for a moment. "If there's two of you, then there may be three, or four, or a hundred. They'll send the jets back after you, or the drones, and this time I won't be able to make them look the other way. No more daring escapes or romantic lake hideouts. You'll just be dead. Have you ever seen what an M61A1 does to human flesh--or scaly flesh, or fuzzy flesh, or any kind of flesh for that matter?" Mark made no response. "I have. You'll be a red cloud. At best. That's what's in that package. Death. Pure and simple."

Mark shifted his feet. Suddenly the contents of his pocket seemed to weigh much more than they had a moment ago.

"You're smart. Way the hell smarter than me. You're the smartest man I know. And she's smarter than the both of us combined. What does she think about this?" This time Mark couldn't meet his eyes. "She doesn't know, hm? Of course she doesn't. What do you think she'd say if she did?"

Mark sighed, then whispered, "That I'm a fucking idiot."

The thin man nodded. "Like I said. She's smart." Mark was too lost in his own thoughts to perceive the insult. "Don't do this, doctor." Mark was about to respond when the man turned on his heels and started walking away. "She may bite your throat out, and she'd be right to do it. G'night, Mark."

Mark watched the man reach the end of the alley and slide into the back of an expensive black Ford Explorer as his chauffeur held the door for him. He didn't turn back to look at him. As far as he was concerned, the transaction had ended and Mark was now a lost cause. Mark kept staring in the direction of the SUV even after it was long gone. "I just can't," he whispered, though he didn't finish the sentence. Then with a final parting "God damn it," he left the cliché dark alley carrying in his cliché trench coat pocket a cliché monster formula.

THEN

Mark breached the surface of the lake after what felt like hours. His body was one gigantic prune, although he supposed his temporary transformation was less severe than what his fiance had just gone through. Candice's ascent was much more graceful, as she simply brought the top half of her crocodilian-leonine head above the surface, the black water flowing like oil across her shiny yellow coat. Her eight eyes almost glowed a warm amber in the dark moonlight. It reminded him of the color of an item of immense value that he'd only recently lost."

As Mark struggled to tread water, he felt a large scaly mass press under him, holding him aloft. He coughed out a thanks as he sat comfortably on Candice's large snake tail. "Been a while," he gasped, "since I've done that."

Candice poked her head up a bit higher, her shark fin likewise breaching the surface. "You hate swimming. You always did. Ever since the--"

"The childhood thing we don't talk about," he interrupted. It was important, even in the midst of their recent life upheaval, that this conversation stop before it could start.

"The incident with the tire. And the inflatable duck raft. And the box of Captain Cru--"

"Yes," he interrupted once again. "That is the incident I'm referring to, yes. Are you okay?"

She smiled, her large white shark teeth reflecting the light of the moon. "Are YOU okay? I didn't know that would work. The whole recycling air thing?"

Mark nodded. "We got lucky. I have no idea which species in the mix with ... you ... has that particular trait, but it was lucky that--"

"Lucky that I got turned into a swamp monster." She smirked. "Yeppers. Very lucky indeed. And it's the salamander bits probably. I don't think my gills would be able to recycle enough air for the both of us." She reached a long tentacle above the water and rubbed her dripping catlike chin. "Do I have gills? Getting kinda hard to remember all my parts." Mark knew she wasn't being morose, she was just finding some strange amusement in the midst of the insanity that had just happened to her. "What do we do now? The jet seems to be gone, but I dunno how we're supposed to be sure of that."

The jet she was referencing was a fighter jet that had followed them as they fled the city. An F-16 maybe. He supposed he should feel strangely honored that someone in the government had felt he and his soon-to-be wife were worthy of being followed by such an expensive killing machine. "It doesn't make sense. They were right behind us. And, I mean, you're fast but--

"Not jet plane fast." Candice was still better at finishing Mark's sentences than he was. Not even becoming a monster could change that. "Yeah. We should be a blackened, charred mess splattered against a hillside. Not making out underwater for ... what, six hours? Eight? What time was it when we broke through the ceiling? It was still daylight."

"Making out?" Mark laughed. "Is that what we were doing? Not you frantically attempting to figure out how to breathe for the both of us while I tried to keep from drowning?"

"You are such an asshole." She splashed him with a tentacle and made stabbing motions towards him with her mantis claw. The former was cute, the latter less so. He hated those appendages. Candice's mind had definitely been altered. Although she was still very much herself, there were competing instincts in her mind that effected her behavior. The insectile portion was the one that gave Mark the most concern, not just for himself but for her wellbeing as well. As if to reassure him that she was still very much the woman he had fallen in love with, she finished her thought with, "That was the most romantic thing ever."

Mark returned a splash her way, although she didn't even blink to keep the water out of her eyes. He supposed she didn't need to, after all. "If you say so, dear."

"I could eat you, you know? Literally. Like, literally, literally eat you? You're aware?" She opened her mouth nearly a meter wide, displaying hundreds of smooth shark teeth as if to display that she could genuinely devour him with relative ease, several rows waiting just behind the front line. Instead, she made a childish "blah" sound, further drawing attention to her maw, her slimy salamander's tongue waving back and forth like a worm.

"I feel like we should both be more upset about all of this. It's entirely possible that--"

"We're completely insane?" Candice interrupted.

"Yes."

"We were already that before we got put into a ... Wait, was that guy holding a Starbucks cup? Starbucks survived the apocalypse? Makes sense, I suppose."

Mark's mind attempted to make some sense out of the past several hours. He and his fiance had been imprisoned by their employer, a military contracting firm with rather shady business practices involving biological experiments. Not the common biological disaster kind, the altering of DNA on a fundamental level kind. Mark briefly wondered just how many other monsters had been created by what Candice and he had been working on. They had been held prisoner by Smiles, a virtual office assistant with a voice like Burt Reynolds that must have been closer to true artificial intelligence than either of them had supposed. It had told them that they had been in cryo-stasis for hundreds of years, and that all human civilization had been destroyed in a nuclear war. Smiles had been tasked with repopulating the earth with wildlife, and decided that he could achieve the goal much faster by simply transforming his hundreds of captives into strange chimeras. Candice was the first to be changed, her body taking on the traits of over a dozen different animal species, resulting in her current strange form. Mark had managed to confuse the machine enough to cause it to experience a memory loop, giving Candice enough time to bash their way out of the room they were held in. Not wanting to spend the rest of their lives starving to death in a klaxon alarm filled underground laboratory, they had defiantly chosen to romantically end their lives on their own terms by breaking through a skylight into the desolate nuclear wasteland. Only ...

"That guy was indeed holding a Starbucks cup." Mark frowned. "What the actual fuck?"

"Actual, actual fuck," agreed Candice.

"Very actual fuck."

"Mark, my keen scientific mind has formed a hypothesis."

"Smiles lied and we are not, in fact, several hundred years in the future after a nuclear holocaust."

Candice made a very human-sounding whine of disappointment, her lion ears folding to the side of her head and her tongue sticking slightly past her lips. "Maaaaark. It was my hypothesis. I wanted to say it, you ass. You're lucky I keep you around because you're a good kisser."

Mark felt himself lifted into the air by a tail that was several times longer than the rest of Candice's body, then playfully dumped on the shore of the lake they had crashed into in an effort to escape a pursuing jet. He shivered, rubbing his naked body to try to get some of the water off. He would need to find some clothes. Candice swam closer, unfolding three pairs of gigantic feathered wings that she began fanning back and forth in an effort to dry them. Mark covered his face as he was rained upon, then nodded towards them as she finished flapping. "Are those okay? With being in the water and everything?"

"I think so. They feel fine. Eagles dive into water after prey, right? But it's definitely weird to feel water dripping off of thousands of individual feather shafts." Candice's voice broke as she said the last word, as if she had suddenly remembered something.

"I think those are my favorite part," Mark rather mindlessly observed.

Candice turned her head slightly sideways. "Of?"

"You. The new you. The wings are really cool. Right?"

Mark hoped the growling noise coming from Candice's throat was a laugh. "I like the tail, but yeah, holy shit I love these things. Not so keen on the slime coming back though. Yuck." She flicked a paw, watching as a string of mucus dripped from her claws. Now that they were outside of the water, the slime in question was once again being secreted rapidly.

"It's okay." For a moment he contemplated saying that there may be a way to reverse her changes, but Mark knew that Candice was far too intelligent to ever believe that. "Are you coming out of the water? You hate deep water more than I do." Candice slithered closer, but refrained from completely exiting the water. "Baby? What's wrong?" Given their current circumstances, Mark felt certain that no human had ever asked a sillier question.

Candice cleared her throat. "I know it's weird given everything else that I am now, but ... Mark, I have a penis. I have TWO penises. That weirds me out more than anything."

Mark raised a brow. "After all this, you're worried about my looking at your junk?"

"It's different junk now!" she moaned. "My old junk is facing backwards now! And the new junk feels weird! All floaty in the water and blegh." She made a retching noise as she wrapped one long tentacle around a nearby tree, testing its weight before pulling herself more upright, slowly wading towards the shore until the part of her anatomy that troubled her was visible. "And balls and everything too. Four of them, I think." She reached down with a paw and scratched across said balls with three inch long claws in a way that made Mark uncomfortable. "They stick to my leg and they itch. Do they always fucking itch?!"

"Kind of," Mark responded. "They always kind of itch. Welcome to testicle ownership."

"Whoever invented balls should be shot and ... Mark ... I mean, how do you feel about the whole ... hermaphrodite situation?"

Mark patted to his side, indicating she should sit next to him. "Candice, how in the hell are you remotely concerned about how I'm handling all of this? You should--WE should--be worrying about how you're feeling. I don't give two fucks about what's between your legs. I love you."

Candice looked sad. "You love me ... football-sized nuts and all?"

He nodded. "Football-sized nuts and all."

Candice sighed as she started to pull herself fully onto the bank. "I don't understand how guys don't realize how weird these things feel. I wish you would've said something earlier. Just ... ew."

"Uh huh."

"I mean just--fuck!" Candice slipped and bumped the bottom of her long jaw on the shore of the bank. She struggled to regain her footing, wings flapping to maintain leverage, but slipped again. "God damn it! These fucking hooves! Hooves suck. They suck almost as much as having balls."

"You'd probably have better luck using your tail," Mark said as he pointed towards the over thirty feet in length and five in diameter of the serpentine body part in question.

"I know how to use my god damn tail, Mark." She was smiling even though she sounded genuinely annoyed at the suggestion. "It's MY God damn tail. Okay?" They both laughed maniacally in every sense of the word given the day's strange events. Candice had endured a traumatic event that no human in history had ever undergone, and now Mark suspected it was time for her to crash hard--physically, mentally, emotionally. For the both of them their world had just veered off the highway of logic and science into the completely absurd. However, she followed the suggestion, using her tail to slither forward and push herself out of the water and onto the bank, mud and water sloughing off of her scales. She let out a loud sigh, though Mark didn't know if it was due to tiredness or frustration with the unfamiliarity of her body.

No one would be able to blame her if it were the latter. Candice was unnatural, an amalgamation of so many different animals that it was hard to recognize them all, and all of them hybridized with her original human form. From top to bottom, she was a jumble of DNA somehow mashing together to form a body as grotesque as it was strangely beautiful.

The first thing that stood out when examining his fiance was her sheer size. Candice's new posture had her leaning forward at a 45 degree angle, though if she were standing straight she would've been easily ten feet tall. Most of her body was made up of the serpent's tail that was just now finishing winding hypnotically to propel her fully onto the bank. The tail was easily three times as long as she was tall, making her look larger than she actually was. Combined with the flaring hood around her neck, it gave the impression of belonging to some sort of cobra. The second most recognizable aspect were her wings. There were six of them, their wingspans measuring in dozens of feet, though they were now retracted to comfortably envelop her sides.

The rest of Candice's body was what required the most processing power for Mark's brain to decipher. There was horse, lion, alligator, shark, and probably a dozen other species mixed in. Her eyes were the most striking feature of her face, the slitted feline pupils in contrast to their round, arachnid shape. Eight yellow orbs were surrounded by a pair of curving bovine horns. One pair of tentacles hovered between her tail and wings, probably aiding in balance. A pair of hybrid lion-human arms were just above these appendages, their claws flexing and retracting from feral paws in a way that Mark hoped was just an absentminded fidget. Last but far more intimidating and bizarre were the mantis arms, whose ridged, scythe-like talons waved gently back and forth on their own, giving the impression they were prepared to impale some large animal at a moment's notice.

Candice's head was that of a lion, complete with a mane with little cow horns barely rising above the fur. Her maw was immense, nearly two feet in length, like some sort of alligator, although her teeth resembled something off of Shark Week, designed to tear and maim and disembowel over millions of years of evolution's sickest prank. Drool and some sort of thick mucus dripped from her jaw, her long tongue occasionally licking between her teeth as she attempted to control a rather disgusting new trait the both of them were going to have to get used to. The hood of a cobra rounded against the sides of her neck, a large shark fin and bumpy alligator ridges trailing down her back.

Her torso was dominated by six rows of breasts, the topmost probably derived from the DNA of a well-endowed dairy cow, two large udders complete with four six-inch teats each that would've toppled her over if she didn't have the tail for counterbalance. The remaining four breasts were relatively human-looking, although covered with lion fur and rather large for even her immense frame, their thick teats poking through the fur and dripping with water and slime. Candice shifted uncomfortably, trying not to draw attention to the two sets of male genitalia dangling from between her legs, probably belonging to some breed of horse given her legs ending in uncloven hooves. Her dual penises were snugly enveloped in a single fuzzy sheathe, her scrotum contain four football sized testicles heavily bouncing against her legs. Two horse's teats rested on either side of her sheathe, and though Mark couldn't see it, her mare vagina was pointing to the rear of her body.

Mark realized he had been openly staring and examining Candice's body, and looked away self- consciously. She smiled sadly, rubbing her elbows with her paws in a very human expression. "I saw that look. I know. It's ... I'm a lot to take in."

"It's okay," Mark replied. "I wasn't trying to stare, it's just ... pretty fascinating, really."

Candice snorted, wiping drool or perhaps snot from back of her nose with a furry arm. "That's one way of putting it. I'm so fucked up now that my brain is still trying to process everything. And since you're taking it all in, you're probably having a harder time looking at all of ... this than I am." She held her paws, tentacles, and scythes up to her face as if seeing them for the first time. "I'm like a Swiss army knife of monster."

"You're not a monster." Mark motioned for her to sit. She plopped down heavily next to him, her large horse's ass squelching in the muddy bank. She almost sat on top of him, probably unused to how much larger she was. He slipped his arm around her topmost shoulder and pulled her gently towards him--or at least he attempted to, although she was now far too heavy for him to pull. "You're not a monster, and I love you."

Candice lay her head on her fiance's shoulder, warm slime trickling down from her round, leonine ears onto his bare chest. "Fuck." She started to raise her shoulder. "The goo. Sorry, I forget it's there and it's so fucking gross."

Mark pulled her closer and lay his head atop hers to keep her from pulling away. "I don't give a fuck about the goo."

Candice acquiesced and lay her head back on the shoulder of the man she loved. "Really?"

"Really," Mark whispered. "Not a fraction of a fuck given. An iota. A quark. Let's rest here a while. Not too long though. We need to find shelter and get somewhere with a roof over our heads. Maybe there's an old barn or something nearby."

"There's a cave that way." Candice pointed into the distance with her tentacle, the long muscular, slimy appendage unfolding even as its twin wrapped around Mark several times in a strange embrace. "About half a mile. Super close."

"Huh," Mark responded. "How'd you find that out? Are we near the park we used to go hiking in?"

Candice shook her head. "No, that's way the hell that way." Her tentacle pointed behind them in the completely opposite direction it had before. "I ... I'm not really sure I know how there's a cave there. But I know it's there. I can ... smell it ... or something? It's hard to describe. But it's definitely there, and way bigger than you'd expect. Lots of places to hide." She snuggled up against his chest closer, although he was thankful that her mantis arms had now folded up closer to her sides. "Let's not wait too long, though. It was romantic making out underwater for hours on end, but I'm not too keen on getting shot by that jet if we can avoid that." Mark nodded again and the pair remained silent for a few minutes. Eventually Candice asked "What are you thinking about?"

"Two things," Mark answered. "Three really. One, the new you is going to take a while to get used to, but it has made you an even better cuddler." She made a catlike purr that was surprisingly cute. "Second, that you're right and we should probably get moving."

Candice started to pull away again, not waiting to hear his third thought. "You don't ... have to do this."

"Do what? Get slimed?"

"No. You ass. You don't have to stay." She looked back at the water as if she missed their time underneath it. "With me, I mean."

"Shut the fuck up."

"I mean, you can have a normal life. You could go back to work and say I abducted you or something. Pretend you don't have any memory of what happened with the cryogenic tubes and the psycho A.I. and the me-being-a-monster." Mark knew Candice realized that would never work even as she said it. "Or we could make it look like maybe you died in the crash or something? You could hide out for a while at your mom's. They'll be looking for me anyway, I doubt they'd really care if you weren't around me."

Mark was silent for a moment. He realized that she may have taken his silence to indicate that he was thinking about her proposal. That he was thinking about leaving her.

"Mark? Are you awake? Did you hear anything I just said?"

Mark nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I did Candice." She pulled away and they looked into each other's eyes, although Mark glanced between her four pairs, unsure of which one if any was the dominant set. "I heard my fiance and the woman I love spouting a bunch of complete fucking nonsense. We're a team. We stay together, no matter how weird it gets. No exceptions. No objections. None."

Eight trails of tears soon leaked from her eyes, although they almost immediately mixed with the slime she couldn't help but excrete. She buried her face in his chest, her snout almost taking up his entire torso. "They shouldn't have done this to me," she whispered as she began to weep in earnest. Candice was a very strong person, but she had reached a breaking point.

"It's okay," he whispered. "Let it out, sweetheart. Let it all out. It's okay."

She cried for nearly ten minutes, trembling against him the entire time, her sobbing intermixed with growls, hisses, and bellows. When she finally stopped, she sniffed and wiped her nose on the fur on the back of her arm. "Mark? What was the third thing?"

"What?"

"The third thing you were thinking about."

"Oh! The third thing was that I'd greatly appreciate finding a pair of pants."

THEN

As predicted, there was indeed a cave nearby, although it took a bit of walking--and slithering--to make it to the mouth. Mark cut his feet several times on the sharp rocks on the hill leading up to the cave before he eventually relented and begrudgingly let his fiance carry him.

"Well," she sighed. "Here we are. Home sweet ... Jesus, I hope we don't have to stay here very long."

Mark peered into the darkness, hoping Candice could see in the dark as well as her eight leonine eyes hinted. "Just tonight. Maybe tomorrow night. We'll figure something out. Hell baby, this might be the best thing that ever happened to us." When she squinted four pairs of eyes at him in confusion, he elaborated: "I mean, we always wanted to visit Costa Rica. Or some little island. Some sort of adventure? No time like the present, right?"

"Are you trying to be flippant or sarcastic or encouraging or what is happening right now?"

"I have no idea," Mark admitted. "I think I was just putting off climbing down into the giant hole in the earth." He sighed. "Ready?"

Candice made no movement forward, only slumping her furry shoulders as her ears flattened against the sides of her head. "I'm hungry."

"Yeah. I thought you might be. You haven't eaten since before the apocalypse, after all." He smiled. "Was that terrible joke better?"

"Just barely." Her stomach audibly growled. "Mark ... WHAT am I supposed to eat?"

"I imagine you can probably eat anything. You're probably more carnivore than herbivore, but I imagine either still works. You probably need a lot of calories now that you're much ..." He stopped himself before he said the word "larger."

"I could devour you. You know that right? Whole, probably."

"... so much cuter and more adorable?"

"Good save." Her ears perked up as if listening to the forest around them. Something was bothering her, something other than the obvious.

"You could, um ... eat a deer? I know how fucking weird that sounds, but we're going to have to get used to accommodating for new behaviors. Think there are any around here?"

"There are. Like, everywhere. I can see heat signatures, smell them, feel the tremors in the ground as they walk." She pointed with a tentacle back down the hill. "There's one there. She's cute. Like Bambi-level cute. Before all this becoming-a-monster nonsense I was going to ask you if you wanted to go vegetarian."

"Vegetarians are weird."

"Yeah." Her mantis arms twitched as if they were very much in favor of this new predatory line of thinking, and she had to wipe a string of drool from her maw.

Mark hesitated to ask a question that had been gnawing at him, but felt this was the best opportunity. "Um ... Back in the cell with Smiles, you seemed very ... I don't know, conflicted? Like there were multiple instincts all vying for control. That doesn't really seem to be the case now ... Is it?"

She made an affirmative humming noise. "Yeah, you're right. Maybe I was still getting used to it or something. Or maybe all the instincts right now are all in agreement that I'm fucking starving. I mean, don't get me wrong, I still kinda want to violently tear your head off, but no more so than usual." She sighed again. "I'm not eating a deer. Maybe tomorrow. Bambi gets to live tonight."

Mark switched gears, trying to cheer her up. "If you could have anything to eat right now, what would you want?"

The question was a loaded one that both of them knew the answer to. "Tater tots," they both answered.

"Same old Candy," Mark replied. He honestly didn't know how she could eat the wretched things.

"I hate that name." She drug one hoof across the dirt, sending a small rock tumbling down the rock embankment they had just climbed. "Do we have to?"

"Do we have to what?"

"Do we have to sleep in the fucking cave?"

Mark nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, we have to sleep in the fucking cave. I'm sorry, baby."

Candice flung a string of slime away from her chin in disgust. "There might be cave crickets."

"Probably. And?"

"I fucking hate cave crickets."

"I didn't know that." Mark was genuinely surprised. He thought there wasn't anything he didn't know about her.

"My feelings towards cave crickets were never a topic of conversation, no. But I hate them. Hate. Using the word 'hate' here."

"Candice," Mark said patiently, though not condescendingly. "You are the most powerful predator on the planet. Probably the most deadly thing since the Cretaceous ended."

"Sometimes you say the sweetest things," she muttered.

"You don't have to be afraid of cave crickets anymore," he concluded.

She sighed. "When I was a kid once I woke up in the middle of the night and heard crunching noises coming from the floor. Scared the fuck out of me. I thought it was a gremlin. When I got up enough courage to look, I found that a cave cricket was eating a Cheeto I dropped on the floor. Its mouth was so big that it was making crunching noises."

"Yikes."

"Mark." Candice turned to face him, dagger-like teeth held just behind a trembling bottom lip. "It was making crunching noises. I don't think you're appreciating the traumatic effect this has on a young girl."

"Baby, it's still our best option. We're kinda public enemy number one at the moment." Mark looked overhead. "I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen any jets circling us this whole time. That doesn't make a lot of sense."

Candice turned to look into the cave, quietly repeating "There might be cave crickets inside" as if she hadn't said it earlier.

"There might be fighter jets outside," responded the man she loved.

With a sigh she picked him up and began slithering down into the cave, her eyes apparently working as well in the darkness as he'd hoped. As they began their descent, Candice whispered to herself reassuringly, "Big and scary. I'm big and scary." She made a cooing noise as he rubbed her behind her ear. "I feel like I should roar right now. Establish dominance or something."

"They're crickets. They fully understand you're the dominant one. You're the big, scary, powerful monster lady and every cricket in the tri-state area knows it. No cricket fucks with you. Not one."

She nodded in agreement. "I'm big and scary. Rawr," she meekly growled, and he laughed.

Once they were past the rocky area at the mouth of the cave, the ground became softer, like white sand at a beach resort. Now apparently confident no crickets were around, Candice coiled her long tail around herself as she lay down, trying to get comfortable. "Do you want to sleep close to me or ..."

"Of course I do." He lay down next to her. "Your tail isn't going to like crush me in the middle of the night or something, right?"

"It won't. I dunno how I know it won't, but I know it won't. You still down for cuddling? I mean, am I still cuddle-able?"

"Extremely so." Mark snuggled next to her, and she rest her elongated maw on his chest. "What's the point of having a big, snuggly creature fiance if you can't snuggle with her?"

Candice smiled. "Thanks. I'm sorry about the slime."

Mark shifted, feeling the slippery warm secretion against his chest and abdomen where her body lay against him. "Don't be. It feels kinda nice. Like a hot bath." He was lying and he knew that she knew it.

"No it doesn't. It's smelly. And gooey." When he didn't retort, she lightly poked him on the shoulder with a tentacle. "Mark ... That's when you're supposed to say, 'You're smelly and gooey.' All playfully and snarky. Like always."

"Oh. I was thinking about it, but I thought given the day's events you wouldn't want playful and snarky."

Candice wrapped him in her feline arms. The fur was so soft, though she was right that there was an unpleasant odor this close to her, like what you'd find in a zoo with its animals closer together than they should be. He'd also have to get used to being little spoon from now on. "No. I WANT playful and snarky. I just want to pretend things are normal as much as I can."

Mark whispered into her rounded ear, "Well then, my dear, you are most definitely smelly and gooey. Like always. Better?"

She sniffed and nodded quickly. "Thanks. And thanks for ... Thanks for being you. I'd be a gibbering mess right now if you weren't here. Like, even more so than usual I mean." She became quiet and for a moment he thought she had fallen asleep. "But that escape was pretty fucking sick, right?"

"Baby, holy fuck! The skylight crashing and the flying away? Holy fucking shit!"

She squeaked in a very not-ferocious way. "Damn right it was! I'm glad you think so. Um ... One other thing?"

"Yep?"

"Are we going to ... Can we still ... I mean, are you going to still be able to love me? With me being like this and all?"

"Candice, how many times do I have to say--"

"No no, I mean, like ... Would you still want to make love? I mean, I fully understand if you don't, everything is so fucking weird now, but--"

"Of course. We'll figure this all out, okay?"

"Good ... Because I'm like ridonkulous levels of horny right now. Like rabbits on viagra levels."

"Of course I'm game. I love you. But ... I mean, how?"

"I think the general idea is you insert your penis into my vagina. Did they not cover that in postgrad?"

"I mean, everything is different now. What feels good? What doesn't?"

She pulled her head from his chest and despite the darkness he could tell she was looking into his eyes as she whispered, "We'll have to find out then. Together." For the briefest moment he felt her lips seductively graze against his. He reached over to hold it, assuming she had felt there was no time like the present for exploration, but then her head slumped onto on his arm and she was fast asleep, purring lightly as she softly snored.

He ran his fingers through the thick fur on the back of her neck. When he was certain she was in a deep sleep he slowly extracted himself from her arms and slipped away back in the direction of the mouth of the cave, the moonlight barely illuminating his path of departure.

NOW

"Mark! How's it going?" The voice on the other end of the line was friendly. Amicable. Perhaps even downright chipper. Given the state of the voice's owner the last time Mark had seen her, it was a welcome improvement.

"Ms. Sung? You decided to stay with us." Somehow Mark had known she would. He had a good feeling about this one.

"Yep! It's been great! Greater than anything I'd ever hoped. And it's Josie. Especially to the two of you. How's Candice?"

"She's great." Mark hoped the tinge of sadness in his voice wasn't too apparent. "Really great. She caught something."

"Oh no, like a cold?"

"No no no." Mark doubted his chimera wife could get sick. Any virus capable of invading her system would have to be communicable across a dozen different species. "No, like a tuna. Or a marlin? Something like that. We're hiding out at our luxurious beachfront condo in the Florida keys." Said luxurious beachfront condo was a cave only accessible by a four hour boat ride across choppy water, or five minutes for an immensely hungry flying-creature-woman. "It's a gated community."

"I can't tell if you're joking, but I'm going to pretend you aren't because it's a prettier picture. Are you guys coming back to visit?"

"Eventually, yeah. I've ... We've kinda got something on our plate right now, but we'll be back as soon as we can. It's the only time Candice really gets to drink a beer. How are you though? She doesn't have you clawing at the walls yet?"

Both of them knew who "she" was.

"No, Haley's been great. And I get to meet her girlfriend soon. I can't wait. And, like, I've kinda taken over some stuff. Logistics mainly. Organizing departures, arranging pickup locations, meeting with new arrivals, helping with some basic medical checkup stuff. It's been wonderful really. I feel like ... I dunno, like I'm good at something for the first time in my life. And no typing, obviously. My hands don't work that well now. The AI thing--Smiles--deals with all of the actual data entry. You know Smiles?"

"Yes." Mark's voice dropped an octave. "I do remember the malevolent heuristic program that turned my wife into a chimera."

"Oh. Um, right. Sorry."

Mark sighed. "No, Josie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that to come out the way it did. I'm just tired from dealing with some ... 'me' stuff." At some point their government benefactor had decided that the operation Haley had been placed in charge of needed a virtual intelligence to assist in handling the day to day logistics of helping people whose lives the government had ruined. Mark certainly wasn't in favor of their new helper. He hoped that it would have at least been given a new voice. At least Haley was prescient enough to turn the damn thing off when Candice was around--most of the time at least.

"It's okay, don't worry about it." Josie paused a moment. "Does it have anything to do with the sample--or whatever it is--that was sent over? Where did this come from?"

"It was sent by a creepy man I hope you never have to meet. And yes, it has everything to do with that. Has Haley looked at it?"

"Yeah, she did. Here, let me get her on the--"

"NO!" Mark realized he had shouted in the phone to someone with probably much more sensitive hearing than non-mutated humans. He wasn't sure how good a pig's hearing was, but the exclamation probably was louder to her. "No, Josie, don't put Haley on the phone." There were voices in the background, one Josie's, one friendly in the way a tornado was windy. "Josie, do NOT put Haley on the phone." Mark could only make out a few words coming from the happy voice, among them being "M.D. doesn't stand for mega-cool donkey."

"Can you just ask her if the sample looked authentic? She'll know what I mean."

Another pause, and this time the words "fucking" and "stupid" were very audible, as if the painfully upbeat voice had intended those words to be the most important that needed to be heard.

Josie returned to the phone. "What was that about? She said 'yes, it looks identical to what Candice went through' and also insinuated it might be ... um, a bad idea. Mark, what is ... Oh no. Mark, no."

Mark cleared his throat. "Okay, good. I'm gonna have to get back to her and make sure there's still some fish left for me. It was good talking to--"

"Mark, no. How could you? Why, for fuck's sake?" Josie seemed genuinely concerned, as if she had been friends with Mark for years and was afraid he was about to make a horrible mistake. Mark's Southern grandmother used to say that a person who cared about everyone was "good people." Josie was definitely good people.

"It's ... I mean ..." Mark couldn't wait to snap this particular burner phone in half. "She ... Josie, there's more going on here than I want to get into. But it's something I have to do."

"But it could be dangerous, right? You don't know if it's safe! What if you get hurt or ... Mark, what if it kills you? She'd be all alone! She'd be devastated. You're her lifeline, you're all she has."

A part of him knew the pig woman was right, but he only repeated, "It's something I have to do."

"Mark ..."

"I, uh ... I gotta go though. Seriously."

Josie sighed in a way that let Mark know that she was acknowledging that she wasn't going to win this argument. "Fine. Yeah, okay. I gotta go, too. I've got a date in like 45 minutes."

Mark blinked. "Wait, you have a date?" Josie's transformation hadn't exactly been kind to her. Mark's first impression of her was that she was abnormally hairy and had a smell that could rival his wife's.

"Wait, as in in-person? Near the secret clinic secret base that we keep secret?"

"No no, it's fine. He's been here before. His sister was turned into a squirrel! She was adorable. Anyway, yeah, he picked her up last week. Lives close by. He's really nice! He gets way too excited talking about black and white horror movies. We're gonna watch Frankenstein or Creature from the Blue Lagoon or something. And he seemed really cool with me being a freaky pig-woman-thing. Haley said she's seen normie people in relationships with post-transformed people like me. Turns out it can work fine, Mark." Josie was no longer just speaking about herself. "Hint-fucking-hint, Mark."

"Yeah. Anyway ... Bye, Josie. It was really good to hear from you."

"Yeah. Yeah, you too. Just ... think about what I said. Okay?"

"I ... Good to hear from you. Bye."

"Bye."

THEN

The copper smell of blood greeted him as he carefully made his way down the craggy slope back into the cave proper. His newly acquired flipflops were nowhere near adequate enough for the job of protecting his toes from being repeatedly sliced by the jagged rocks. "Baby? You here?" he called. "What's that smell?" By the time he had finally made it to the soft sandy floor he was almost certain he had deduced just where the smell was coming from.

For one brief, terrifying moment, Mark's fiance let loose a low sound that started as a hiss, elevated itself to a horse's whinny, and finally graduated to a low growl. Strangely, the middle sound was the most ominous, although it was probably the transition from one sound to another that did it. Despite the enveloping darkness, Mark could vaguely detect the movement of wings and a large serpent's tail. Mark kept forgetting just how physically large Candice was now, but she was sufficiently reminding him of the fact.

There was the "clop clop" of hooves on hard stone just before Mark heard the sound of something heavy hitting the floor with a wet slap. Somehow, he was sure that whatever carcass she was eating had fallen from her jaws. He didn't want to think about that just that moment.

"Mark?"

Mark sighed in relief at hearing his fiance's voice, his breath feeling somehow much colder than the already chilly, stale air. "Yes, baby. It's me. It's Mark." He felt it important to mention his name. He couldn't lie to himself. He was terrified she wouldn't know him. "Are you okay?"

"I ..." She took one step towards him. He hoped she didn't notice him taking one step back. She kept her head bent low, udders dangling above the sandy floor, jaws pouring drool and blood. "What the fuck, Mark? You left."

"I left."

"Don't ..." Candice took a deep breath, attempting to contain her irritation and surprise in a very human way. That was a good thing. Right? "Don't do the repeating me thing you do to confirm what I say, okay? It's fucking condescending and I really can't deal with that shit right now."

Mark decided he'd take human irritation over primeval anger any time. He stepped closer, stopping just out of the reach of her lion arms, but far within the range of her other appendages. Before he was afraid that she may attack him. Now he was more afraid that she may start to argue with him. That was the last thing he wanted after this insane day. "I'm sorry, Candice." He genuinely was. "I didn't mean for it to be."

"I ..." Another low growl emanated from her throat and he was back to being slightly terrified again. "I know you didn't. I'm sorry, I just ..." She raised herself as upright as she normally stood. Her ears flattened against her head and she spat onto the ground, blood and slime dripping from her teeth in twin streams. "I ... I kinda ate Bambi and that's something my mind is trying to process right now."

"You caught a deer?" Now Mark's scientific curiosity was kicking back in. "What was it like? How long did it take? Did you have to track it first? Did you attack it from the air or the brush? Does the digestion feel normal so far? What about--"

"Mark, baby, I love you, but give me a moment here." Her hoof kicked at the carcass, fidgeting in a way that indicated she'd very much like to return to her meal. "It ... It just smelled so good and you were gone and I was SO fucking hungry and ..." Mark could make out that she was rubbing four pairs of eyes with the fur on the back of her paw. "Poor fucking thing. I'm sorry." She was addressing the kill, not him. "Where the hell were you? I thought you left."

"I did."

"I mean, I thought you LEFT left. As in, not to return. Where did you go? And when did you get pants?"

Mark did a little twirl like a model on a runway, breaking the tension with a bit of silliness by displaying his newly acquired ratty jeans, YETI cammo t-shirt, and neon orange flip-flops. "Like them? I saw some rich asshole's cabin on the way out here. One of those 'cabins' that are twice as big as most houses. Fuck, their garage was bigger than the house I grew up in. I broke in to said garage and acquired said pants. They had a box that they were going to give to a charity or something. I figured at this point, we could use some charity so it wasn't even technically stealing."

"You ..." Candice's tentacles reached out to Mark, hesitating for just a moment as if wondering if it were okay to touch him. Mark wondered if this was a conscious action or if octopi species did this instinctively. In either case, he stepped closer to allow the tips of the feelers to touch him as if to confirm that he was indeed there. "Mark, you are completely insane. You know that right?"

"Never had a doubt on that front. I looked for something in your size but--"

"Mother fucker, I am a size 17." She gestured towards her large form, tilting her waist to the side in mock sexiness, although it almost caused her to topple over. "And if you say otherwise, I will fucking eviscerate you. With these ... pointy things." She waved her mantis scythes back and forward in a very unconvincing show of malice.

"Duly noted." He fumbled with the large green box he was carrying, extracting a small kerosene lantern and a few flashlights. He fiddled with the knob until a small glow illuminated the cave, temporarily blinding the both of them and revealing some very unwelcome graffiti spray-painted on the cave's walls. Several racial slurs and a swastika were revealed. He wondered if Candice had really lost anything in leaving her humanity behind.

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the light, he held his breath for just a second as he again took in the form of the woman he loved. He hoped he'd get used to it eventually. He also hoped she hadn't noticed. Despite the half-eaten deer carcass laying nearby and the bloody drool falling from her maw, Candice still seemed strangely beautiful in her own way.

"I was hoping," he continued, "that they'd have an outdoor refrigerator in their garage, which they did because apparently upper class people always have outdoor refrigerators in their garage. I don't really know how long we should lay low, so I figured these would make our fun camping adventure a little more palatable."

"Insane," was Candice's reply as she moved closer to him, plopping down next to him, her horse ass making a squelching noise as it kicked up a cloud of dust. She peered into the bag of stolen food as if their earlier argument had never happened, blinking each pair of her eyes independently of the others two at a time. "Completely, completely insane."

Mark extracted a wet box of frozen Snickers treats which nearly fell from his hands as he pulled it out. "Fuck!" The exclamation echoed off the cave walls much more loudly than he would've expected. "They almost melted."

She nodded. "They almost melted," Candice repeated in the same way she had just chided Mark for doing. "Fuck, now I'm doing it. Of course they almost melted! It's like a million degrees out there. What else did you steal, you fucking degenerate?"

Mark pulled the rest of his haul from the sack, revealing his treasure to her one item at a time. Canned peaches, canned vegetables, canned soup--none of which thankfully required a can opener. A few boxes of dry cereal, a few six packs of Gatorade, and even a few cans of expensive craft beer that he felt fairly certain she was a fan of and was absolutely certain the rich twats hadn't intended to go to the poor. Mark had been very careful in packing the sack, as he wanted to save the crown jewel of his heist to be revealed last, hidden just below a ratty blanket that would hopefully be more comfortable than the sandy cave floor. "Annnnnnd, last but not least ..." Here it was, his big moment. "Ta daaaa!" He displayed a wrinkled, soggy bag of tater tots with both hands as if presenting a newborn to her mother for the first time.

Candice's round ears rotated in several different directions, signaling the conflicting emotions she must be feeling as she beheld Mark's ultimate triumph. "Tater tots?"

"Tater tots!" When Candice didn't begin to sing his praises to the heavens, he shook the bag as if to confirm to her that what he was holding was both taters and tots.

Candice wiped a string of bloody drool away with a tentacle, glancing in subdued embarrassment back at her recent kill as if to apologize to the deer for her fiance's interruption before fixing Mark with eight unamused eyes. "You got us tater tots?"

"Nooooo." Fuck. Something was wrong here. "I got YOU tater tots!"

Candice stared unblinking at him with an eerie, unsettling gaze.

"Because ... you love tater tots?" he continued. "And I love you. So I ... got you some ... Why are you not erupting in a fit of unrestrained joy?"

"Mark, how the fuck are we going to cook tater tots." She smiled. Despite his apparent failure, the site made him happy. "Did you steal a pan too? Or lighter fluid? Or a deep frier and a small generator?"

Mark stared down at the limp bag, his joy turning to sorrow. "Oh. I guess I didn't think about that. I guess I thought you could ..."

Candice tilted her head to one side. "You thought I could ... what? What?" When he offered no answer, she prodded him with her paw. "Mark, what? Mark? Mark what did you think I could DO? Mark, I need you to tell me what you thought I could DO because that sounds like it's going to be the most adorable thing I've ever fucking heard."

"I ..."

"Mark ... did you think I could breathe fire? I can't breathe fire, Mark. I'm not part dragon. Did you ... Did you think I was part--?"

"No!" Again, his voice carried far too loudly than he would have liked. "No, I didn't think you were part dragon, you goof."

"I don't know whether to laugh, cry, berate, or hug you for a decade or more. Did you think--?"

"No, God damn it!" He was laughing. "I didn't!"

"I'm going to pretend that you thought I could breathe fire because that's really, really funny."

"Whatever floats your boat, dear," Mark muttered, feeling like the tater tots had betrayed him somehow.

Candice leaned forward as if she were going to kiss him. When he leaned forward to do the same, she pulled her head back at the last second and ran her slimy tongue across the entire length of his face. It was slightly more endearing that it was disgusting. "I love you, but you deserve that. Now pass me a Snickers bar, you complete scientific genius."

Mark opened the soggy box and unwrapped an only slightly melted candy bar. He started to hand it to her, then hesitated when she was unable to grasp it. Her fingers just didn't seem to work the same way anymore, her hands more paws than hands now. "Do you want me to ...?"

"No," she answered as she extracted her claws from her fingertips. "No, I need to do it." She carefully picked up the treat using the claws on both of her upper hands. She had almost managed to bring it to her mouth before she dropped it, only to immediately snatch it from the air with a tentacle. "Oh!" She was just as surprised as he was at the sudden movement. Her wings even slightly fluttered. "Oh, wow, that's way easier!" She plopped the bar in her jaws and rolled it around against the roof of her mouth before swallowing it. "Holy shit, that was good."

"Better than Bambi?" Mark asked, pulling two more bars out of the box.

"Better than Bambi." She hung her head a bit. "Also, let's not talk about Bambi. Can I get another one?" He started to peel the wrapper off a second bar, but she shook her head and took it from him with her tentacle and ripped off the wrapper with a claw before plopping it into her mouth. "Neat. Guess some things I'm just going to have to learn how to do differently." As she swallowed the bar, she suddenly frowned. "Ah, fuck."

"What?"

"What if any of this stuff is toxic to me now?" she asked around the candy, now hesitating to swallow it. "Like dogs with chocolate or mice with onions? There's a dozen species in here now, is this stuff going to be safe?"

Mark took a bite of his own bar. "I don't think it can hurt you. Think about it, your stomach is probably a mix of lion, alligator, and who knows what. Just from the shark DNA, I would think you'd be able to eat basically anything. We'll monitor your digestion for a while, take it slow, but I think you should be okay."

"Hmm," Candice nodded and swallowed the bar. "My tongue grew back when Smiles cut it off. I imagine my stomach lining would probably regrow immediately if it were damaged anyway."

"Wait, WHAT?" Mark's own frozen treat was suddenly forgotten. "Smiles cut your tongue off?"

"Mm-hmm," Candice mumbled as she chewed on ... something. She had swallowed the bar, so what was she chewing on? Mark realized that she had regurgitated it like a cow. She didn't seem to notice and he wasn't impolite enough to point it out. "With a laser."

"You're fucking with me."

"I am not!" Now frozen dairy was mixing with the strings of drool. "Fucking with you is not occurring. Not yet, anyway." She muttered the last bit a little conspiratorially before picking up a can of green beans.

"Holy shit."

"Right? It was wild!"

"Holy shit," he repeated.

"This is a weird discussion we are currently having."

"It really is."

"Fuck!" Candice spat out her frozen treat. "I just threw up in my mouth and ... Ew! Fuck!" She looked at him in equal parts embarrassment and indignation. "Why didn't you tell me that I chew cud now, for Christ's sakes!"

"Honey, how would I know that? I didn't know that."

"No excuses!"

They sat in silence for a moment and then chewed on some green beans and Captain Crunch. She groaned every time she coughed the stuff back up into her mouth. Halfway through their meal, Candice started to drag the remains of the deer closer before self-consciously retracting her tentacle, still embarrassed at having eaten half the thing raw. After Mark insisted it was fine, she devoured the remainder of the kill in half a dozen bites, bones and all sliding down her gullet. She apologized in obvious embarrassment at her new eating practices, but Mark waved it off as if he was quite used to watching the love of his life swallow half of a large mammal in one go. Strangely, she didn't regurgitate it. Perhaps meat didn't cause the reaction.

Candice finally broke the silence. "Mark? Um ... While we're on the subjects of weird things that I do now that you'll be completely okay with since you love me above all things in the universe and would never complain about anything no matter how disturbing and you're so sweet and nice and--"

"Candice, whatever it is, it's fine. What is it?"

Candice lifted her twin udders with her tentacles. "These. These fucking things need to be milked. Like SUPER bad. It's starting to hurt."

"Really?" Mark leaned closer. "That's weird. Why would they be doing that? You're not pregnant. I wonder if it's a--"

"Mark! Focus!"

"Sorry."

"Less scientist talk, more helping me out here." She lifted the udders a little higher as if to get his attention. "Why can't you just be boob-obsessed like every other guy just this once? This is one thing I definitely can't do on my own. I'm too slimy. Can't get a grip with any of my arms."

Mark shifted closer, petting her mane as she cooed. The gesture was becoming automatic, and Candice seemed happy with that. "Yeah, okay. Can't be too hard, right? Um ..." He reached for one of her teats, picking the one closest to her from the set of four on her right udder. She wasn't wrong. It was hard to get a grip on. When he noticed she was biting her lip he asked, "Does it hurt when I touch it?"

She shook her head quickly. "Nooooo." The sound was eerily similar to the low of a cow. "I mean, no. Quite the opposite, actually. Can you squeeze it? Gently?"

He did as she asked, but couldn't get enough traction to express any of the milk. "This is harder than it looks. I see what you mean, the slime is kind've a nuisance here."

"It's kind've a nuisance all the time." She crossed one leg over the other, trying to hide her dual cocks peeking their way from her sheath. "Um, grip harder? It probably won't hurt as much as I think it will."

Mark nodded, gripped the teat tighter and pulled it downwards, but his hand slipped off. He tried again, this time applying more pressure and was rewarded with a single drop of white liquid. "Stop me if this hurts, okay?" He grasped it tightly, tugged, and a stream of milk shot across the room, evidently silencing the cave crickets from their hellish chanting for a few precious moments.

Candice flinched, thrusting her chest forward as if she had been poked by something. "Ohhhhh fuck, that's ... Mark, that's ... Holy shit that's good. Eep!" Candice noticed she was now sporting two horse erections and did her best to cover them up with her tentacles. "Sorry! It just--"

"Don't apologize," Mark interrupted. "It's fine. It's just something new, right? You going to be okay? Should I keep going?"

She nodded furiously, strings of slime being flung in several directions. "Yes. Yes, yes please. Yes, you should keep going. Yes."

Mark returned to his milking, aiming the streams that soon followed in the general direction of the chirping noises that surrounded them.

"Sooooo gooooood." Candice's eyes were fluttering. The air stank like a barnyard in rutting season. "Sorry. Trying not to make embarrassing ungulate noises."

"Just go with it. Whatever feels natural."

"Nothing feels natural with mmmmeeeeeoooOOOOO!" Candice's response was interrupted as Mark gave a particularly lengthy tug. He felt he was starting to get the hang of it. Candice didn't even try to stop herself this time, her cries coming out as one long moo. "Can I ...?" she asked hesitantly.

"Hmm?" Mark paused.

"Don't stop!" Eight eyes suddenly focused on him in a way that was extremely creepy. "Jesus, don't ever stop. Can I, uh, take care of this?" Candice opened her legs, both of her two foot long cocks springing upward and almost slipping between her udders. "Unless you'd like to ...?"

"Um ... No, you go for it." He took his newly-acquired tacky camouflage t-shirt off for fear of it getting wet with milk or ... something else. "For now. I think I need to ease into this a bit maybe." He hoped he wasn't hurting her feelings, he just wasn't quite prepared to help her out with what she was asking.

Candice didn't seem to mind, her higher brain functions closing down entirely as she wrapped her tentacles around her shafts. Mark's sole thought as he resumed his milking was to chastise himself for ever thinking that waking up from cryogenic stasis was going to be the weirdest thing to happen to him today.

THEN

Dawn was now beginning to peak in through the mouth of the cave. Mark was suddenly more tired than he could ever remember being and Candice looked very much in the same boat. The pair moved back to where they had earlier slept, the sand still moist from the slime she couldn't help but excrete. Mark spread the blanket across the sandy floor, then moved to lay down next to her. She stopped him with a gentle nudge from the smooth part of her mantis arm's elbow.

"No." She shook her head and nodded towards his torso. "Pants off."

He hesitated for just a moment before unzipping. "Um, okay?"

"I'm bigger than you, so you do what I say." Her tongue hung just an inch or two past her black lips. Mark was beginning to suspect that happened whenever she wanted to indicate she wasn't being serious. Either that or she was going to have a lousy pokerface from now on. "So pants off. Lose 'em."

Mark stepped out of his stolen pants and stood naked before his fiance, hands to the side as if asking if she were satisfied with his current lack of attire.

"Better." She pulled him close to her and wrapped him in her arms and pulled him to the ground. "I just want to feel your skin against me, okay? Sue me." She snuggled close to him, making him feel proportionally like a hairless teddy bear. "It feels nice. It feels ... normal. And sorry if my breath smells like roadkill."

He scratched behind her ears. "Sweetie, your breath has always smelled like roadkill."

Upon hearing the mock insult, she gave a happy mewling noise that was as joyful as it was bizarre. "Yes! Like that. Just like that. Thank you." She snuggled closer to him, the weight of her body feeling comforting against him, even if it wasn't entirely HER body.

They were both quiet for a while. Both knew the other was still awake, slowly accumulating to the weight of their bodies against each other, familiarizing themselves all over again with the warm weight of the other against entirely new skin. Candice finally broke the silence with a statement that nearly broke Mark's heart to pieces. "I always hoped we'd have kids. That I'd be a mom some day."

"Candice, oh sweetheart." Mark put his hand against her shoulder, or what he hoped was one of her shoulders. It was hard to tell in the dark. She was too large to put his arms around anymore, but holding onto some part of her was just as good. "I'm so sorry. Me, too."

Her voice wasn't so much sad as it was distant, resigned, viewing a future that would never be. "I don't ... suppose we're ... y'know, still compatible in that way?"

"I don't think so, baby." Despite what he'd said, Mark had never been sure he'd wanted children. His work was always so important to him it had never even entered his mind until he'd dated Candice for a while. Now, laying in a musty cave with little food, no water, and barely any hope for the future, he realized that he did indeed want children with his partner whom he cared for more than anything he'd ever known. "Maybe we can adopt?"

Candice let out a noise that started as a growl and ended in a low moo, which Mark hoped was some sort of laughing response. "Mark, look at me. Who the fuck are we going to adopt? Godzilla? Quasimodo?"

"Sorry."

"That alien penis monster Geiger thing?"

"Sorry."

"It's okay."

Mark pulled away from her slightly. "No. No, it isn't. Candice ..." Mark hesitated. She may very well not want anything to do with him after what he was about to say. But he owed it to her to say it nonetheless. "It's my fault."

Candice lifted her head. "What's your fault?"

"You becoming ... this. It's my fault. I knew what they were doing. I mean, I didn't really expect them to be testing DNA manipulation against human beings, but I had a feeling that what we were working on could be used in that way. I should've told you something and we could've quit together. If I had just said something--"

"Mark," Candice interrupted. "Stop."

"Candice, it's all my--"

"Mark!" Her voice was so loud whenever it needed to be. "Stop. It isn't your fault. No more than it is mine. You think I didn't notice it too? I actually thought we had both realized it but I didn't want to say anything about it. Sometimes I really bought into the whole 'doing it for the good of the country' patriotic bullshit they always screamed at us. I thought we both knew, it just wasn't something we talked to each other about." She pulled him in closer as they both lay down again. "It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's the fault of that fat fuck whose name was on our paychecks."

"O-Okay." Mark was surprised that he didn't feel relieved that she didn't blame him. Maybe he was just tired.

"It's not your fault."

"Okay."

They were quiet for a while longer before Mark asked, "Are you still awake?"

Her response was similar to the moos she had exclaimed earlier. "No. Maybe. Barely. Why?"

"I just wanted to say I love you and ... and you were right."

He again felt her tongue against his skin, this time against the side of his neck in a much more affectionate manner. It wasn't entirely as disgusting this time. "I'm always right. I'm a woman. What was I right about?"

"The crickets." As if on cue, one of the demon beasts chirped in the distance, a nightmare from Dante's fever dream beckoning them to come with it to hell. At least, he hoped it was in the distance. "They ARE fucking creepy."

He felt her head against his chest and her tail curl around the both of them. "I accept your apology, doctor."

"Thank you, doctor." And then they were falling asleep in each other's arms, just as they knew they would do every night for the rest of their lives.

NOW

As Mark stood alone in the small ocean cave he knew his actions would soon have grave repercussions for his life--including if said life were only going to continue for another twenty minutes. There was a very real possibility that the transformation would kill him. Should he survive that, there was an even higher probability that his spouse and the love of his life would kill him. That was the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario was that she would no longer suffer alone. He knew every day, every moment was a struggle in dealing with what she had become. Despite constantly telling him that she was growing more used to it day by day over the years since the change, he knew she was doing a bad job of hiding her afflictions. Her life had been ruined by a military industrial complex more intent on turning a profit regardless of moral implications and less concerned with the effects their experiments had on the people working for them.

Except that's not why you're doing it, he thought to himself. Not really. But thinking about the real reason made him so sad he felt he would lose his composure, and he would need every bit of willpower for what he was about to do.

Mark's contact was trustworthy. He had proven that time and time again. And Haley--despite being infuriating beyond all mortal comprehension--was very much a genius in her own right in the lab. After she had left the strange little cult with her cow-lady partner she seemed to have hopped online as if to check her email one day and within a few hours had passed several medical examinations needed to secure her spot in postgraduate medical school. She later said that remembering her email password was harder than getting her M.D. It was a very Haley statement to make, and therefore almost certainly true. If she said the formula would recreate the transformation exactly then she meant it. The fact that she had used so many expletives and tried to convince him not to use it was all the more proof that she was sure it would work.

The main difference, and Mark's utmost concern, was that the transformation would be carried out over a different timeframe than Candice's. Mark himself would've also been changed had the machine's experiments been allowed to continue. What exactly the insane virtual mind had in store for him he would thankfully never know. Presumably it would've been the same number of mutations his wife had undergone, albeit with a completely different dozen or so species. The difference between Candice's transformation and what was soon to happen to him was that they were carried out under completely controlled conditions, and only after the pair had been soaked in whatever gel Smiles needed in order to prepare them for the change into chimera beasts.

This formula was a different beast entirely. It would not be carried out over hours, but minutes. Despite assurances from his contact that it was unlikely to kill him, Mark had come to realize that he occupied a place in the world where the unlikely was now commonplace.

He could still back out. Pour the viscous nightmare into the sand. Forget about the whole stupid thing. Tell his wife he loved her. Suggest they stay out late to watch the stars. Listen to one of her silly stories she'd told him a million times before. Stare deep into four sets of leonine eyes and try not to cry when he thought about her life being ruined unlike anything any other human being had experienced.

Any other human being until now. He uncorked the vial and drank it all in one go, fighting as hard as he could to keep it down. It was the most foul thing he'd ever tasted.

It's worth it, he thought. It'll be worth it.

The effects were immediate, as was the pain. His head was in a vice, his skull in a walnut cracker. The act of breathing felt like inflating a tire with his own lungs. The pain in his temples was the worst. Blood and sweat dripped down the side of his face. With shaking hands, he felt his temples, immediately feeling the hard bone pressing against his skin as his skull reshaped itself.

The horns, he thought. He sometimes forgot Candice had them; her pretty mane was always in the way.

The pain surprisingly lessened as the tip of the horns broke his skin, his flesh growing around them and preventing any more blood loss.

No, not THE horns, he thought again. MY horns. I have horns now. Pretty horns.

It would be worth it. Wouldn't it? It had to.

The horns continued sliding out of his skull, bending slightly upward as they reached about six inches long. Now it felt surprisingly good, somewhat like cracking a bubble in his back. They continued to grow until they extended nearly a foot, his neck muscles straining with the added weight until they too began to firm and harden in order to support them.

One down, only a hundred other changes to go.

Next was a change he felt very unsure about. Candice was a mix of male and female, a literal hermaphrodite, and soon Mark would be too. He was uncomfortable with this change above all the others, as uncomfortable as Candice herself had been. His body was at least easing him into the more feminine growths, although as his chest began to swell he knew the slowness of the change wasn't going to last. He cursed himself for forgetting to disrobe as he tossed his shirt to the side. He began to fiddle with his belt before noticing how pronounced his nipples had become, swelling from the size of a lentil to an eraser to a ... Well, a nipple.

Mark had felt guilty in that he had always liked this particular alteration of his wife's anatomy, though he'd never dream of telling her--even if she loved having them played with. He wondered if she'd feel the same as he dragged his thumb across one, hissing at the sharp sensation it brought--not pleasant or unpleasant, just altogether unusual. His pectoral muscles began growing, filling out into small breasts as his nipple continued swelling. He was groping at himself now, trading his modesty for the new, pleasant sensations. If he was going to be a monster, he may as well enjoy the process. He felt himself growing harder than he could remember ever being and once again began fiddling with his belt, finally slipping out of his pants and boxers in one movement, feeling strange at just how hard he was as his chest continued to swell. In the time it had taken him to remove his pants, his breasts had filled out to larger than Candice's had been before the change, and in another few seconds they had swelled to oranges, to grapefruits, to cantaloupes. His lower back strained, although he knew the formula would keep it from giving out entirely.

His nipples continued swelling, soon becoming absurdly long, three inches at least. He slid his hands away from the soft curve of his breasts, feeling the sparse, soft white hairs covering them intermittently, finally enveloping his nipples with both hands as if he were jerking himself off. He was not prepared for the pleasure it brought as he fell to his knees on the warm sand, startling himself as a deep bellow like a cow's moo escaped from his lips.

It's a cow's moo because I'm a cow, he thought. A good cow. Ready to breed and be petted and breed and breed and ... He removed his hands before his thoughts went any further. He knew that Candice had been a mess of conflicting animal instincts as she changed. Sometimes she still got like this, demanding one second and becoming docile the next. He should lay off feeling himself up until he was more in control, at least until the next change started. Before he even finished the thought he noticed his hands were back on his breasts, rubbing the swelling things and twisting his nipples.

My teats, he thought. I don't have nipples. I have teats. Acknowledging the word sent him into another long bellow, which only intensified as the pleasure increased. His breasts were ludicrous now, volleyballs sliding down his rib cage with no sign of stopping. The tugging motion he applied to his teats became more difficult as they continued to swell and swell until he could no longer fit his hands around them. His moans of frustration ceased when four creases began forming around the outside of them, gradually deepening and becoming more pronounced until with a near orgasmic feeling they split into four separate teats. As his chest continued expanding, they began to separate more and more and soon his breasts resembled two cow udders attached to the body of an otherwise normal, boring human male. They grew faster now, no longer jostling for room against each other. Everything was growing so much faster now. He felt a strange sense of disappointment when the growth finally stopped, leaving medicine ball sized tits hanging down to his waist with four nipples apiece measuring at least a good six inches long and two thick. The entirety of his breasts and teats were interspersed with fine white hairs now blowing in the hot breeze, his sweat tickling them pleasantly.

He was almost hesitant to touch them now, knowing what would probably come next. Candice had informed him of her changes before he had been revived in the metal prison. She recalled everything with a horrible vividness. Next would come the milk. He had been embarrassed by her lactation at first, though gradually he warmed up to it given how much she seemed to enjoy her twice daily milking. He wanted to make her as happy as he possibly could. Five minutes ago the thought of having to milk himself seemed repulsive, although now he couldn't wait for it. He'd be the best milker there was, even better than her. She'd be so jealous of him, although he knew she'd take a perverse pleasure in taunting him about being a large, stupid farm animal. He loved being a large, stupid farm animal.

Mark shook his head, trying to suppress the thoughts. They weren't his own, and they wouldn't control him. He was a doctor. He was a scientist. The instincts wouldn't keep him from being himself. He'd fight them off until the change was complete and he would be able to control them, as well as Candice usually was able to control them. He knew he could remain rational throughout the changes. He was absolutely certain.

And then as if on cue, his body decided to prove how little control he had over the situation as he felt warm drips begin to splatter against his legs. "Ohhhhhhh fuck, that's weird." At first it was a simple drip here and there, but gradually the volume became so great that the liquid began falling in one nearly continuous stream. His teats began to hurt, veins throbbing along the skin of his breasts as they demanded to be drained.

The day after Candice had changed, she had asked him to help milk her. None of her limbs were really up to the task. Her paws and scythes were completely useless for the job, and although her tentacles were somewhat adequate they kept slipping against the mucus that covered her entire body. He of course obliged, although he had really no experience in milking cows. He was so terrible at it at first that she started begging him to go faster as the sensations filling her were becoming less of an annoyance and more painful. Finally he had settled into a rhythm and they were able to get through an ordeal that would eventually become practiced and simple. Candice required milking at least twice a day, and from the noises she made as she was milked, she certainly didn't seem to mind. And of course he didn't mind the frequency at which she became in the mood immediately after. Over the years, Mark had become very skilled at the act, and was certainly grateful now that it was time to attend to his own udders.

His teats were now the right size--the perfect size, he reminded himself--for gripping as he wrapped his round hands around two of them. With a practiced motion that would humble even Old McDonald, he rubbed gently, tenderly with his fingers back and forth, lovingly coaxing them before beginning the milking in earnest. He began softly tugging at his teats earlier than he would Candice's as some small but loud part of his mind demanded he speed up the process. Immediately Mark realized why Candice loved milking time. Spikes of pleasure assaulted his mind at each gentle tug, gradually increasing until he felt an almost orgasmic tingle in the back of his mind. Switching from one teat to the next on both udders, he contemplated for just a moment moving one hand down to grasp his cock. This thought was immediately shut down by whatever brain process was demanding that he continue. Both hands had to be right where they were. They had a fucking job to do. Milk began squirting in long spurts onto the ground, eventually creating little white pools in the divots in the sand. There was so much of it. Candice would've been jealous. He was obviously the superior milker, although he was upset at himself for finding this to be important.

Switching to the third teat, his cock was begging for attention, straining and bobbing in thin air. Again he wanted to touch himself, and again his now partly bovine brain assured him that was simply not acceptable. Thick blue veins were visible against the skin of his breasts as they were gradually emptied. By the time he reached the fourth and final teats the stream had slowed to a spurt, then a trickle, then a few drops. He was sad to feel the pleasure slowly come to an end, although he relished the thought that this would happen several times a day. Exhausted, he slumped to his ass onto the soggy sand, panting hard as he tried to slow his heart rate.

No one was as good at giving milk as he was, and no one was as good at doing the milking. Fuck Old McDonald.

Mark rolled onto his back, smiling as his breasts flopped down on either side of him. The strange feelings that had come over him gradually receded until he was once again a rational, celebrated biochemist--albeit one that had willingly consumed a formula that was turning him into a monster.

His respite lasted a few minutes more before the next phase kicked in, the overwhelming pain in his sides immediately indicating one of Mark's most dreaded changes was beginning. His sides felt like something was violently pressing against his ribcage, trying desperately to get out. He was briefly reminded of an old movie he saw where a phallic monster burst from John Hurt's stomach. He continued rubbing his teats, coaxing whatever pleasure they could provide, all in an effort to cover up some of the pain. It worked, somewhat, and he soon felt twenty fingers clawing through the sand.

He purposefully stared at the rocky ceiling of the cave, not wanting to witness what he knew was a sight he wasn't interested in seeing. He focused on one stalagmite, then another, counting them one by one as he tried to keep his mind off just how bad this was hurting and how bizarre it was to feel his new appendages slowly coming under his own control, although his nervous system occasionally rebelled and sent his four new arms spasming out of control.

The stalagmites, he told himself. Focus on the stalagmites. Or were they stalactites? Why the fuck would they name them so similarly? He had lost count, so he started over. He stopped when he realized he was now seeing far more of the ceiling than he had just a moment before. Of course. The eyes. He hadn't even noticed them opening for the first time, but now that they were he laughed in stupid wonder at being able to see in nearly 360 degrees. He wondered how he ever could've perceived the world with only two. This of course made avoiding looking at his appendages impossible, although now that they were completely grown he didn't feel quite as grossed out by them. In fact, the opposite was true.

Mark raised himself up to a sitting position, unconsciously using his bottom two pairs of arms to push himself upright while he tried to dust the sand off his back with his middle pair. He spent several minutes just staring at his hands, grasping and manipulating his fingers, picking up handfuls of sand, and tossing it to the side just to feel the new sensation of having six arms. Mark had always hated spiders--as any rational human being should--but he couldn't help but laugh at how wonderful these new appendages felt. He picked up a small seashell, manipulating it from one pair of fingers to another to test his fine motor control before tossing it into the air and catching it easily with another arm. It was eerie how quickly his brain had adapted to his new muscles, although he was certainly happy it had.

He had little time to continue playing with his new parts before his bottom pair of arms went slack. Try as he might, he couldn't move them, like his nervous system had suddenly given up on them. Slowly they began to stretch little by little, the hairs on the back of his arms falling out as they grew. His fingers started merging together as he lifted them with his other two arms, turning them over and feeling the little bumps that grew along the underside down to where his palms once were. As they continued to grow, they started to bend in unnatural ways, like his bones were becoming softer. Eventually they grew so long that he was unable to hold them completely. By the time his fingers had completely fused, they lay in his lap and the sand near him, bending back and forth like noodles. They began to twitch as some semblance of mobility was slowly returning to them, even as his tanned skin darkened to a reddish pink. Suddenly they jerked back to life, flailing in the air and occasionally slamming into the rock wall, scraping the sensitive skin a bit.

When they were finally back under his control, Mark manipulated his new tentacles, holding them in front of his face and examining the suction cups lining the bottom side of them. With little concentration, he caused what had to be hundreds of the things to flex simultaneously in a way that he found extremely disconcerting. They were soft to the touch, although the more he traced the inside of the cups the more he felt the rough, almost toothlike edges that lay underneath the soft, rubbery skin, each individual "tooth" twitching slightly as he ran his fingertips across them. There was so much more to feel now.

He had little time to continue playing with his new tentacles before his middle set of arms began to itch terribly. He scratched at them with his original pair, growing more and more frantic until he saw part of the skin begin to peel away like they had just recovered from a horrible sunburn. As he continued scratching, groaning as he peeled more and more of the skin away, he felt something was wrong. He tried to push the thought aside, telling himself that absolutely nothing about this experience was remotely normal, but there was something else nagging at him.

The thought finally connected just as serrated green blades emerged bloodlessly from the bottoms of his arms from his elbow to his palms: the order was wrong. Candice's middle pair of arms were tentacles, and her bottom pair were the weird mantis talons that even now painlessly tore his human arms to shreds. His were the exact opposite: tentacles on bottom, insectile in the middle. This was supposed to be an exact replica of her change. It was a minor change in the grand scheme of things, but it worried him that the formula wasn't mirroring hers as it should. What's more, his tentacles were beginning to hurt. He was losing mobility in them as they weakly writhed left and right as if searching for something.

He pushed the thought aside as he peeled what was left of his skin from the eerily shiny carapace of his new talons. Last to go was the skin on the end of his arms, and he nearly retched when he peeled his fingers completely off, tossing them aside with a shudder and hoping he'd never have to see anything as gross as that again. He flexed his scythe-like arms, waving them back and forth in midair, eventually taking a few swipes with them. They were longer than his original arms, although a far cry shorter than his tentacles, which were nearly three times as long as he was tall.

Mark was still experimenting with moving his strange insectile appendages when he heard a voice saying "It's yours." With a start, he looked around for the source before realizing it was coming from within his own mind. "This place. Yours. All yours. Protect. Kill intruders. Kill and eat them. Kill and eat." The voice thankfully faded away quickly, although the instinct to assault anything that intruded on his lair was still there. Candice had told him about this. The instincts had first started when the cow part of her body kicked in, but they became much stronger as her DNA was overwritten by that of the more predatory parts of the animal kingdom. She said they became much easier to control after her transformations were completely over, although she admitted conspiratorially that the overwhelming need to mate and be mated happily never went away.

He'd be fine. He'd get over the strange predatory instincts. Besides, the only person who'd be entering his lair would be Candice. At this thought, his vision literally went red as a dark part of his mind demanded he kill anyone who trespassed into the cave. No, it corrected itself. Into HIS cave. Mark actually started to eagerly anticipate the next change if it would quiet that particular instinct. He had no interest in attacking the love of his life, and not just because she'd almost certainly tear him to shreds if it came to that. If what Candice had recalled about her change was accurate, some more docile animals were about to join the mix, and hopefully shut up the instinct that was expounding unto him the joys of decapitating his prey.

The urges were silenced as the pain in his tentacles became too much to bear. They were visibly peeling, just as the skin on his middle pair of arms had done, though he knew that this time there wouldn't be any appendage underneath them. They felt so dry that they were becoming brittle. If only he ...

Mark slapped himself in the forehead, thankfully with his sole remaining pair of human arms. As always, he was an idiot. Candice had told him about this. The slime would eventually begin to develop, moistening the tentacles that couldn't survive without any sort of soft lubrication. Had he any sense whatsoever he would have moved closer to the ocean water and given them some relief before he started to excrete mucus in a way that he hoped was less disturbing than he had always envisioned. Candice had said that it actually felt nice, like a warm bath, although she never really got over the salty, earthy odor that it gave off. He would tolerate that just fine if it meant an end to the burning pain he felt.

It should kick in any second now. Any second now. "Any second now." He was repeating the refrain out loud as if that would speed the process along, but halfway through the sentence he felt something start to dribble out of his mouth. Candice was always drooling like a Saint Bernard, and Mark assumed this was the beginning of that mutation, but as one of his bicuspids slid off his chin and dropped to the sand at his feet he realized he was speeding along to another change. He pressed against his teeth with his tongue, which almost comically slid out of his mouth by several feet as he did so, pushing half a dozen teeth out with it along the way. That was the salamander tongue, and the itching in his throat hinted that his internal gills were also starting to come in. Hopefully the slime wasn't too much further behind.

Mark carefully reeled his dripping tongue back into his mouth, feeling like something out of an old Warner Bros. cartoon. As he did, he felt sharp pinpricks from his gums as he drug the long tongue back into his throat. Mark had always felt that out of all her mutations, Candice's shark teeth were the ones that she was actually in favor of. She had won several rounds of poker with him on their never-ending trek across the country because of them. One smile was enough to convince Mark that he was better off folding. He knew she of course wouldn't hurt him, but there was some instinctual part of his human brain that always found them something to be terrified of. He touched one of the teeth with his finger, feeling the slow, eerie growth as they pressed outwards, rising like a pyramid from his gums.

Except it wasn't a pyramid. It was more like an obelisk. Not something you'd find on a great white, more like the teeth of a sand tiger shark he'd once seen in an overpriced gimmicky aquarium. The rows of teeth developing just behind his new ones made him feel certain it was indeed from some form of shark. But why was this different from Candice's change? This was supposed to be an exact replica. The creepy government spook had said as much, and the talking donkey doctor had confirmed it. Where were the differences coming from? These teeth were at least more manageable than Candice's surely were, as they gracefully curved back towards the back of his mouth, giving him a little bit more room, especially since his muzzle hadn't developed. It still wasn't quite roomy enough to be able to completely close his jaw, as the resulting string of drool that escaped the corner of his jaw indicated.

The next change went almost unnoticed as a thin fin started to slide out of his back. His expanded vision confirmed that it was indeed the fin of some other species of shark, its dirty brown skin standing in contrast to the smooth gray flesh of his wife's own fin.

His tentacles had now turned an almost sickly shade of pink and he was getting seriously worried. He started shuffling towards the water, hoping to provide them some relief when four very pleasurable sensations developed on his chest. Mark smiled a little shamefully. He had to admit that he was slightly looking forward to this next change. He felt two bumps on his skin pressing against the underside of his udders, with two more growing underneath them on either side of his naval. He traced his fingers across the lower pair, hissing at the altogether new sensation. As the bumps continued to swell into nipples he felt a soothing feeling, as if he were rubbing lotion onto his skin.

About time. The pain in his tentacles was starting to become maddening. He never thought he would feel overjoyed to be secreting mucus from every pore of his body. The relief in his writhing limbs was almost immediate, pain slowly giving way in a sensation that felt somewhere between blood returning to a leg that had fallen asleep and a morning stretch. It would take them a few moments more to be fully mobile, but the pain was almost entirely gone now.

Mark again traced his hand across his swollen teats, his middle pair driving him wild as they pressed against his udders. The slime was everywhere now, its scent filling the hot air of the cave. It wasn't entirely disgusting, but certainly wasn't a pleasant aroma. Candice had always been ashamed of it, and she never stop apologizing for it. Mark had always waved it off in that it didn't bother him, but in truth he had never really gotten used to it. He had always supposed that the smell must have been worse for Candice's leonine olfactory system. He supposed he'd be able to confirm that very soon. The feel of it, however, was nothing short of wonderful as it dripped from his swollen udders, from his fingertips, from his scythe-like forelegs, and thankfully from his tentacles. He was finally able to raise them off the ground now, and they wasted little time in curling around his body, the rough grains of sand completely undetectable as he enveloped himself in the warm embrace. His erection had returned in full form, almost painfully hard from the half dozen new hormones flooding his veins.

His still-human hands continued rubbing across his torso as his teats finished growing, and with a smile he felt the subtle curves that would soon begin to blossom into two extra pairs of breasts to go along with his udders. At this point he knew that his mind was completely deviant. He was becoming less the scientist who had graduated top of his class at Stanford. He was becoming a monster, an animal that wanted to fuck and to be fucked, particularly by another certain monster. He began to pant at the thought, drool and slime mixing as it dripped across his uppermost pair of breasts, then sliding between his cleavage before soaking into a line of fur he hadn't even noticed he had grown. It started right underneath his udders and continued in a bushy trail all the way to his pubic hair, soft to the touch and feeling exquisite as it grew between his four lower breasts. They were more than a handful now, swelling into oranges, then softballs, before finally settling into the size of cantelopes. His teats were swollen to an inch or more in length. He knew he'd never get tired of feeling them, twisting them, caressing them with his paws or claws or ...

All thought emptied from his mind as he felt a knife being plunged into his back. It was quickly followed by another stab, then another, then a dozen, then thousands. He fell to his knees, weeping and mewling pitifully. Nothing Candice had ever described from her change could possibly have rivaled the pain he was feeling now. "See?" The mantis's voice made itself known again. "Told you. Protect the lair, dumbfuck." This didn't make sense. There was no one in the cave other than himself, and the disembodied insectile voice that he felt was probably smoking a cigarette and rolling its segmented eyes at him somewhere in the back of his mind. He felt behind his neck, withdrawing immediately as his fingers were pricked in several different locations at once.

It was supposed to be a mane. A lion's mane. Candice's was so soft it felt almost like cotton. He loved falling asleep with his head pressing into it. These felt like knives, or needles, or ...

Quills. He had grown quills. This was wrong. This was very, very wrong. One or two deviations from mirroring Candice's form were fine, maybe even to be expected. But this wasn't right. This was another new species, more alarming than just another type of shark. It was something not remotely incorporated into Candice's chimeric form. So far the script had proceeded more or less as expected, although with a few twists and turns from what Candice had described as the progression of her transformation.

Mark barely felt the ridges forming, trailing along from the top of his head to roughly halfway down his back. He felt a strange feeling of relief at growing crocodilian parts, since that was getting back to the script. His relief continued to grow as his maw started to elongate, the rows of shark's teeth clicking into place and leaving his mouth feeling much less cramped. He hoped he didn't look as stupid as he felt he must--like a fucking hedgehog with a nose like an alligator.

He knew the changes were finishing up now, and he couldn't be happier. It wasn't the pain that bothered him, or the lust, or the conflicting instincts. It was the sensations, or rather the appearance of new sensations. More and more feelings were assaulting him, whether from the ability to taste the air on his tongue, sensing prey in the nearby lapping waters, the feel of the tall grass that wasn't even around him as he slithered a tail he didn't even have through it. It was all so much, and not knowing how many more senses were going to be added to his already addled mind was threatening to overwhelm him. With his maw expanding his sense of smell was twice as powerful as it was just a moment ago, ten times, a hundred times, strong enough to smell ...

Her. She was near, and getting nearer. The thoughts assaulting his mind whispered simultaneously: "Kill her." "Mate her." "Embrace her." "Ask her how was her day." "Bite her fucking arm off." His feet shifted in the direction of her scents, dragging him along towards the myriad of smells that surrounded her that he was only now capable of really appreciating. They told him that she was a predator, which he already knew. That she was prey, which he knew was certainly not true. But he smiled as he felt the strongest scent of all emanating from her, from the very part of her that he knew was always there: the human part, the part that said she loved him so very much.

Another step, then another, and then suddenly his maw was slammed to the ground, half-buried in the slimy sand. His tentacles lifted him up easily, and he looked at the source of his fall. His feet were no longer feet, but becoming something much simpler. A strong keratin was enveloping all of his toenails, even as his feet stretched longer, the heel growing much farther away from the rest until he was standing on cloven hooves. Horse feet are cloven? Right? Of course they are, he thought. Nothing at all to be worried about. The muscles in his legs felt like copper plates, durable and strong enough that he could run forever. Or would be if he weren't so top-heavy. He needed more balance. Where was the goddamn tail?

He smiled like a teenager as the changes moved on to an area he guiltily admitted to looking forward to. His cock had been painfully hard since this whole mad enterprise had begun, and as it stretched longer he felt a sort of perverse pride. He would be able to sire dozens of foals soon. Hell, a hundred. Sooner rather than later. His mate was just outside. His sack dropped lower as it swelled to tennis balls, oranges, grapefruits, soccer balls. His long tongue drooped lower, drool and slime dripping onto his cock even as the end swelled out into a perverse mushroom-shaped gland. God, he wasn't even remotely human anymore. Before he realized what he was doing, he was licking the tip, shuddering in insane lust as he wrapped it slowly around his member as it swelled to the width of a soda can.

Fuck! Why had she never told him it would taste so good? With a feral, jagged grin he wrapped his tongue tighter, slowly dragging it across the smooth surface from the tip down past the medial ring and finally licking at his dripping sack. He could just ...

No. Patience. Don't want to come yet. She's coming. She's here. His mate. What was her name again? Canned Ice? What was her name? What was a name for that matter? He slowly released his grip on his cock, relishing the earthy taste just a moment longer before he felt an altogether new, yet very pleasant sensation coming from just behind his scrotum. He had almost forgot about that bit. He almost hoped he would skip that part, although as a new type of wetness slid from his mare pussy he couldn't begin to remember why he had felt that way. His cunt dripped in fruitless need, desperately calling out for someone to claim it even as his new golf ball sized clitoris slid into the open air for the first time, releasing his heat-smell to any worthy mate that happened to be nearby.

It didn't have to wait long. Another monster entered his lair, one the still-changing beast vaguely recognized. Were they mates? Was that it? Or was this the first time the beast was seeing the Female? It hardly mattered. They'd be mates soon enough. There was no doubt on that front. But first they'd try to kill each other. There was protocol to follow, after all.

The Female spread her wings, preparing to strike as fast as she could at the Male. But with three sets of wings and not enough room to unfurl them, her instincts had done the Female no favors in the close confines of the sea cave. What the Female had in experience, the Male made up for in maneuverability. He wasn't completely finished changing, and while he was still slightly smaller than the Female he would have some measure of an advantage, albeit one that the Male must immediately capitalize on. He lunged for the Female, sinking three rows of jagged teeth into her neck, not enough to wound but surely this would be enough to make the Female submit to his advances. Besides, he would be the larger of the two soon enough. He was certain of that. The Female would have to comply.

The Male's head was dashed against the rough stone wall before he had even realized he was airborne. The Female was so unbelievably fast. She had used twenty-five or so feet of tail to wrap around the Male and throw him to the other side of the cave, then without a moment's rest she was propelling herself along the same tail and impaling her rival through his upper left shoulder with her green ...

Her green ... pointy things. Whatever they were called. He had them too, only his were much prettier. In an effort to show the Female just how nice they were, he lashed out with his own pointy things, but by now the Female had her jaw around one of his ... long ... stringy, writhy things. Those. The slick surface of said stringy thing and the thick flesh gave the Female little purchase. Out of the corner of one of his many eyes, the Male noticed twin three-foot long cocks snaking outside of their sheath. Perhaps the Male should let the Female have her way with him first. The Male was the Female after all. Wasn't it?

No. Again. Protocol. Finally the Female gave up trying to gain purchase on the rubbery writhing ... tentacle? Yes, that's what it was called. His tentacle. The Female apparently decided that the back of the Male's neck was the next logical new target, but as she attempted to sink her teeth into the Male's flesh she was met with hundreds of dagger-like quills. The damned things had proven useful after all. The Female howled in pain, spitting out blood, drool, slime, and even a few teeth that were quickly replaced as another row of them clicked into place before they had even hit the sand at her feet.

All fight had left the Female. The pain would fade in a few moments, but that was all the time her rival would need in order to claim his new mate. The Male had won. Of course it had. He sauntered over to the Female, a cocky sway in his hips being offset by the large serpent's tail that was finally growing from just above his ass. His cock was splitting in two, his mare cunt winking with its own separate need that would be fulfilled after the Male claimed his mate. Turnabout was fair play, after all. The Female had fought well, the least the Male could do was let her fuck his cunt afterwards. It was just good sportsmanship. The Male remembered hearing that word at some point back when he still had opposable thumbs and a functioning frontal lobe. He wrapped his ... ten-tickles? Right? Yes, his ten-tickles around the creature's torso, holding her in place firmly yet almost tenderly. The fight was over. Surely the Female agreed.

The noise that erupted from the Female's throat signified that she did indeed agree. It started off as the mewling of a cat before changing to the bellowing of a cow in heat, and finally with an almost mournful hiss. The mating ritual was indeed over. The Male raked his ten-tickles down the front of the Female's chest, teasing the teats that would soon provide for his offspring. The Male maintained his grasp on the back of the Female's neck, but relaxed it a bit as he felt her tentacles begin to return the favor, cradling his sack and his cocks, slathering and caressing his needy cunt--all at the same time. Said cunt was winking over and over as it desperately awaited its turn. The Female slid her tail out of the way, revealing her own slit to her conqueror. The Male began thrusting, trying as hard as he could to slip inside his mate but just couldn't seem to find the right angle. The lowing moos emanating from the Female increased in volume, although they now ended in a desperate plea in some strange language that the Male could no longer understand. Finally she used her ten-tickles to guide her mate to the thing he most sought in the world and then ...

And then rapture. He was thrusting into the creature below, his roars of triumph rivaled by the Female's own as her needs were finally being fulfilled in ways they never could have been before. He started with just the one cock, but before the Female even realized what was happening she felt his other penetrate his mate as well, even as she cried out in even greater satisfaction. Nothing could be better than this. It was so right, so perfect, just what the both of them had always needed.

After an hour of desperate fucking, the Male finally came in his mate, his roars, hisses, bellows all mixing together with that of his mate as what they both had sought after for so long was finally happening. At some point during their mating, the Male's tail had finally finished growing and the monster below him lovingly wrapped her own tail around that of her mate, signifying the pair were closer now than ever. She squeezed tighter with both her tail and ten-tickles to the point that the Male was having trouble breathing. He gave a hissing laugh at just how much his new mate must love him. She loved him so much than it wasn't until the Male felt one of his ribs crack that he realized something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

The attack was impossibly fast. The Female slithered onto her back, simultaneously biting at the throat of the Male even as her pointy-things stabbed him in the chest, over and over and over. The Female had evidently gotten what she wanted out of her mate. Now it was time for the next phase of the protocol: the phase where the Male felt the stringy parts of his throat begin to be torn from his neck.

This was it then. The mantis had won. Or was it the spider? It didn't matter. Soon nothing would.

As he slid to the sand, the Male felt a strange sense of comfort at just how warm the grains felt against its rapidly cooling body. Four pairs of eyes began to lose focus as the world became darker. Strangely enough, the light emanating from the entrance to the outcropping seemed brighter than ever, dazzlingly so even as dusk was approaching. And then through the opening strode Mark's wife, bringing him back to himself even during his last moments. She was wearing a lab coat, carrying a cup of garbage Starbucks coffee, and shyly waving a clipboard in his general direction. This was how she looked the first day they had met. She wasn't the monster that was even now chewing on Mark's trachea. Candice was the beautiful genius he had loved from the first time he had laid his eyes upon her. No tail, no udders, no maw. Just her. She was perfect. Mark couldn't stop himself from smiling even as the muscles that controlled the motion began to stop working.

The last thing Mark heard before the world went completely black was "Baby, I caught a tuna. You want to get a fire started? Maybe after dinner we can play Boggle? Same rules as usual--Alabama Boggle, because you can't spell for shit?"

His last thought was far simpler and much less confusing to him: "We should never have left that fucking cave."

THEN

"We need to get out of this fucking cave."

"I was thinking that you need to focus on getting yourself inside an altogether different cave." Candice was shifting her weight on one leg and then another, back and forth while using her tentacles to maintain balance, her hooves making soft clopping noises. "My pussy. I am in actuality talking about my pussy. It's a metaphor. For my pussy. The cave is my--"

"I got that," Mark politely interrupted. "The subtlety was not lost upon me. You should've been a poet."

"I fucking should have been." She stuck her long tongue in his direction. He got the feeling that she was growing to like the expression. "Poets probably get paid better than genius biologists. They probably also don't get turned into freaky monsters." She kept leaning to the left and then back to the right, as if her footwork were somehow the cause of their current predicament. Once or twice she threatened to lean too far to one side, but her tail and tentacles kept reorienting her. Once she had actually stumbled and her wings immediately flapped in a way that kept her upright. Mark had trouble digging the dirt out of his eyes. "Mark, what--and forgive my insistent nature here--is the fucking holdup?"

Mark scratched the back of his head, his nude form growing cold in the cool air of the cave. He was reasonably sure no one in history had ever had this awkward of a dilemma. He certainly hoped not. "Maybe if you try, I dunno, leaning over?"

"I am leaning over!" To emphasize the point, she picked one foot completely off the ground, her tentacles keeping her relatively stable.

"No, not that way. I mean forward. Maybe?"

"We fucking tried that before! I pitched too far forward and fell on my tits. I almost died."

"You didn't almost died."

Her response was a barely audible grumble of "Almost died." Still she leaned forward again, slowing down when her udders shifted. She flapped her three sets of wings in an effort to maintain a relative equilibrium, but unfortunately this had the opposite effect and ended up nearly toppling her forward again. "Mark, God damn it ..."

"I know."

"God DAMN it."

"I know."

"I'm fucking top-heavy and bottom-heavy and just ... URRRRGH!" She growled in genuine frustration.

"I know," he repeated. "I think the main issue is your tail. And the wings flapping. Can you try to ...?"

"You want me to ... Okay ..." She took a deep breath in frustration, readying herself for the act of explaining just how unreasonable his demands were. "You want me to LEAN FORWARD on fucking HOOVES, using TENTACLES to balance myself while my cow HONKERS swing like an Edgar Allen Poe plot device, keep my WINGS from trying to STABILIZE me ... ALL THE WHILE holding my thirty foot fucking TAIL out of the way? This is like ballet lessons all over again. OH! And I'm covered in slime. Anything else? Need me to cure macular degeneration while I'm at it? Bake a cake? Do your fucking taxes?" She looked over her shoulder, a heavier than normal string of drool falling from her lips, her expression one of genuine annoyance.

He had been fighting back a laugh for several minutes now, but he could no longer resist giggling like a child as Candice continued to list off the various stages of sheer absurdity she was undergoing in an effort to get laid. When he had his laughing back under control he answered, "This seems like it would be way easier if I were underneath you."

"Okay, ONE I could probably break your spine if I fell on you. TWO, I've got horse tits in the way. THREE, go fuck yourself. And FOUR ..."

Mark waited a moment before further inquiry. "And four?"

Candice gave a surprisingly shark-toothed shy smile. "Four, I don't think missionary is gonna do it for me anymore. I just ..." She cleared her throat and wiped the string of drool from her chin, though the slime she deposited in doing so ended up being just as thick. "I just really kinda want it from behind. Like ... Like really, really, really want it from--"

"Got it. Well, I mean, what's comfortable? How about if you try--" he gestured towards ... he didn't even know. Some part of her body. He wasn't sure which.

"Oooh, how about this!" Candice ignored her fiance as she tried moving her legs far apart, allowing her considerable breast flesh to finally rest on the ground before draping her tail completely over her back between her wings. The position left her ass pointing to the sky in a way that reminded Mark of some absurd cartoon chicken he must have seen thirty years ago. "That ... kinda works, right?" she asked. "I mean, I know that's got to be the most erotic site you've ever seen in your entire life, right? I'm fucking nailing it over here." Despite her tone, a different expression entered her face. She was pressing her top teeth into her bottom lip. She apparently liked this position. Maybe this would work.

Mark stepped a bit closer, examining her as if she were a used car. Or a horse. He berated himself internally for the thought. "You know, that's ... actually the closest position we've found so far. I think that might actually work?"

"Really?!" Her voice cracked. She looked back in his direction between her legs, lifting herself up slightly so she could see him under her udders. This didn't entirely work as intended, as her long snout was covering her eyes in her upside down position. "This works? I feel like this is probably the most embarrassing position any living thing has ever been put in, but whatever. You think you can ... y'know, get in there?" Uttering the words "get in there" seemed to trigger something in her. Her lips were dripping even more than usual, her balls pulling in tighter to her crotch, her dual cocks bobbing more in the air.

Mark felt like he should probably be more weirded out by the site of his mutated partner proudly displaying her genitalia, but it oddly enough felt very familiar. It was weird, but it was Candice. Certainly it was Candice with a few extras added on to this particular part of her anatomy, but it was still very much the woman he loved. The sheer number of expletives regularly hurled in his direction certainly indicated that. "There's still kinda two problems."

"Two prob-- Mother fucker, you had best not be talking about my dicks."

"I'm not talking about your dicks."

"I can't do anything about the dicks, Mark! They're part of the package deal." She lowered her chest to the ground again, her cunt now seeping like a leaky faucet.

"I'm not talking about your dicks," he repeated, although now he was certainly observing them. His fiance's dual horse cocks were separated from her winking cunt by a quartet of football-sized horse balls. The smell emanating from her genital area certainly wasn't pleasant, but would have to be another one of the million or so changes he'd have to get used to. "First problem is you're really, really tall. We'll have to--"

"God damn it, Mark, then find a fucking box!" There was legitimate frustration in her voice, almost anger. The dominating, predatory species were moving to the forefront of her responses. "You have no idea what this feels like. I fucking need to be ... I need to be fucked, okay? Bred like a fucking animal. I'm using the word 'need' here. Not 'want,' 'need.' I'm losing my mind out here."

As she continued talking, her brain seemed to be shifting to allow the submissive herbivores a turn over her personality. Not for the first time, Mark wondered just how much of Candice's mind had been altered. She was still her, but the new instincts must be maddening to maintain. She said it wasn't like voices in her head, not like the spider was talking, then the horse, then the whatever. Mark hoped she wasn't lying about that; it would probably drive her insane.

Mark shook his head, returning his attention to her fiance. Her cunt was now winking, smacking wetly as it grasped for something that wasn't there. It made crude sucking noises as it opened, her oversized clit desperately beckoning for a mate. There was a heat emanating from her crotch that hadn't been there a moment before. "Sorry. We don't have a box, but maybe I can steal one from--"

"Mark?" Candice's head was shifted to the side in a way where he could just make out three or four of her eight eyes. There was an almost pitiful look in them, as though the more dominant parts of her personality had given up and her instincts were switching to the more submissive creatures to try to entice her mate. It was amazing how expressive the arachnid eyes could be. "Baby? I'm so fucking horny I don't think I can keep going. We need to figure this out. Now. Please?"

"I know, sweety," Mark responded soothingly. "We will. I promise. Whatever you need. But, um ... Second problem?"

"Second problem?" There was a tremble in her voice. She sounded almost desperate.

"I, um ... may need a little more ... y'know, encouragement? Maybe?"

"What? Oh." Candice took notice of Mark's now limp penis. He smiled apologetically. "God damn it, Mark! You were surprisingly hard like a minute ago, you pervert. Do we need to look into a prescription for the little blue pill or ...?"

"No, smart ass!" he interrupted. "It's just that ... I've kinda been waiting for a while and ..." Mark switched gears, trying to make another goofy joke about their strange predicament. "I mean, excuse me for having performance anxiety when my fiance is a dinosaur."

Candice's expression immediately shifted from intensely aroused to genuine hurt, then quickly graduated to anger. Mark immediately knew he had fucked up. Using her tentacles, she slowly raised herself from her semi-prone position until she was facing entirely away from him, her wings unfurling ominously for a moment before folding to her sides. She then slowly yet calmly turned around until she was facing towards Mark before slowly lowering her head until she was relatively eye level with him. "Mark?"

"Shit baby, I was joking. I didn't mean it to sound mean, I really didn't. I'm so sorry, honey."

"Mark!" She flashed her sharp teeth for just a moment.

Mark watched as he saw his own mouth open and then close in the reflection of four sets of amber colored eyes. As Candice's mouth opened slightly, dozens of strings of drool slowly breaking as her top teeth separated from her bottom. He automatically found himself counting the rows of teeth in her maw. He finally answered, "Um, yes?"

Candice's response was to open her mouth just wide enough to stick her tongue out and blow a wet raspberry in his face, her voice hot and smelling faintly of venison and ice cream. As he wiped the drool from his eyes he had to listen to the screeching, hissing laughter of his easily amused fiance as it echoed off of the walls of their cave. When he was finally capable of seeing again he had to wait a few more minutes for the laughter to gradually cease.

"Finished?" he asked.

"I fucking had you going for a minute there, didn't I?" She cocked her head to the side like a kitten. The expression was rather endearing.

Nevertheless Mark answered stoically, "I legitimately thought you were going to bite my face off, yes."

"Good! Candice is satisfied." She wrapped her feline arms around him, dragging him in for a hug.

Mark returned the hug, although he couldn't help himself from gesturing towards her udders and quipping, "Careful you don't smother me to death with these things."

"You fucking wish," was her response. Without seemingly much conscious thought, Candice lifted Mark off of the ground and slithered away a few meters before plopping the both of them down atop they're stolen, now-slimy blanket. "The dinosaur line was pretty good though. You ass."

"Thanks."

Candice gave an exaggerated sigh as she snuggled up against him, her soft mane rubbing against his chin and chest. "I don't know why, but I still love you, my tiny boyfriend."

Mark couldn't help feeling like he had avoided a thermonuclear war. And not a fake one this time. "Want to keep trying? We could always--"

"Get drunk!" Candice wasn't quite finishing Mark's thought this time, but he had to admit the idea did have merit. "This would probably be easier if we were both drunk. At least for the first time." She was purring at the idea.

"Wow." He smiled. "Now you're going to have me literally robbing liquor stores to feed your sex addiction?"

"You'd be good at it," she answered encouragingly. "Your Snickers bar heist went great, after all. Only one small step from petty theft to robbery. Go fetch me some vodka. And fruit mix. And some lemons. And a big box." Mark felt a warm tentacle slithering between his legs at the last request.

"Your physiology is so different now, though. We don't even know if you can still get drunk."

"We should fucking god damn well fucking find out!" Candice began cooing as Mark scratched her behind the ear and around her horn, petting her in a way that was strangely automatic at this point. "I guess you're right, though."

"About what, love?" Mark replied.

"We do need to get out of this cave," Candice answered. "You desperately need some deodorant. And some fucking toothpaste. Baby, you fucking reek."

Mark laughed. "Me?! Wife of mine, you smell like a zoo."

"I AM a zoo. What's your excuse?"

Mark was quiet, unable to think of a good comeback. "Fuck. That was a good one."

"Thanks." She lay her head on his chest, dragging him in closer and hugging him tightly. "I like hearing you call me 'wife.' It feels good."

Mark held her paw in both hands. "I love you," he said. And he meant it. Despite their bizarre adventure, he loved her more than ever.

"I love you," she returned.

"Not mad at me?" he asked.

"Not mad at you," she answered. "Just stupid horny. But I know it's going to take some adjustments."

"We'll figure out what works for us. I promise."

"I know. And soon. Or then I really will get mad. And attack you."

He smiled. "Uh-huh."

She wrapped three sets of arms around him, carefully avoiding poking him with one set in particular. "Attack the shit out of you."

"Uh-huh."

Without any forewarning, Candice began to lick the side of Mark's face, her long, thin tongue dragging across several days worth of stubble and back down again from forehead to chin. "Uhh, baby? What the hell are you doing?"

She paused just long enough to say, "Shut up. You smell bad. And I like it. Hold still."

Mark remained still for as long as he could. Some part of her mind must have decided he needed grooming. When it started to tickle he meekly said, "Um, that's enough I think? I think you got it." Candice continued the grooming as if she hadn't heard him. "Baby? Please stop."

"Make me," Candice purred before placing her head on his chest and staring in his eyes, a strange smile on her strange lips. She rubbed her legs together and ground her cocks against his shin.

Someone cleared their throat. It took a few moments for Mark and Candice to realize that the noise hadn't come from the other. There was someone else here.

"Who the fuck is that?" Mark whispered.

"It's ..." Candice hesitated. She didn't stand, but her ears were pinned to the sides of her head and her pupils had expanded to nearly cover the space of her eye. "It's ... It should be no one."

"Unless they found us. We need to--"

"No," Candice interrupted. "I mean, it shouldn't be someone at all." She sniffed. "There's no scent. None whatsoever."

Mark was silent for a moment. He could hear Candice's large heart beating--at least he hoped it was hers and not his own. "Maybe ... you just couldn't smell him because of the cave?"

"Mark, I can smell ..." Candice paused for a moment, doing the math in her head. "Seven deer, at least a dozen snakes, and a whole fucking family of bunnies about two miles away. One has cancer. Poor thing. I should be able to smell whoever that is."

The new arrival cleared their throat again. A voice of an older man rang out into the mouth of the cave, ringing like a funeral bell off the cold dark rock. "You may as well say goodbye. Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes the chopper to chop off your head." Mark and Candice looked at each other in abject confusion, although given their recent happenings neither should've been surprised at anything at this point.

"Just joking," the voice rang out again. "Sorry, I just always wanted to say that and this is probably the only opportunity I will ever have. I know it was in bad taste, but I couldn't resist. Can you please come out and let's talk a bit? I mean you no harm, I'm alone, and this thing doesn't work underground." The voice paused for a moment then finished with, "Take your time of course."

The pair never took their eyes off of each other, although during the short monologue they had at some point instinctively reached for each other's hands.

"Run?" asked Mark.

"Where to?" asked Candice.

"You can fly."

"I can also be shot."

"Make for--"

"The lake?"

"No, trick won't work--"

"More than once. Finish each other's--?"

"Sentences while we are perforated? Best case scenario and--

"Not a bad way to die."

With one final "I love you," uttered simultaneously from the both of them followed by a rather sloppy kiss, the pair turned and walked towards the mouth of the cave, Mark stopping to grab his pair of stolen pants. They were looser now than when he had acquired them, certainly because of the lean diet of venison the pair had been subsisting on. Candice waited for him to catch up before the pair started up the rocky entrance. Mark knew that Candice would have carried him and they could reach the entrance much faster, but Mark's pride wouldn't let him. Also, he supposed, it was customary to march towards one's own crucifixion.

The light was painful after being inside the stale cave for so long. Candice shielded the sun from her eyes, although it was likely more of an automatic gesture since her arachnid-leonine eyes had probably adjusted immediately. Mark wasn't so lucky, but when they finally did adjust he saw that the man was true to his word and was completely alone.

Mark's examination of the figure took place over the course of one quarter of a second. That was all the time the cursory inspection had before the events that unfolded. During that time, Mark observed that the intruder was a tall man, extremely skinny in a way that was almost unnerving. His attire consisted of a button down flannel over a white shirt, a cheap pair of jeans, and hiking boots. He had a trimmed beard and a shaven head. He held aloft a small gray box with wires coming out of it, loosely gripped in his fingers, one of which bore a large, oddly shaped ring.

In the remaining three-quarters of the second, Candice had screamed the word "You!" And was suddenly ... gone. Mark's first thought was that she had been disintegrated entirely and that he was next. Extreme horror gripped his heart at the thought of his wife being dead, but he soon realized that she was now moving towards the figure at a speed that made it seem as though she had vanished. In the span of a scant few seconds, Mark observed that Candice exhibited the features of all of her various predatory parts as she struck. The powerful muscles in her snake tail propelled her forward towards the new arrival. Her six wings spread outwards, bearing her aloft for just a moment before folding towards her sides to give her descent all the speed they could muster. Before she crashed into the lanky man, two boulders that must have weighed several tons each crashed into him, raising a cloud of dirt around their impact crater that hid what was assuredly the red smear that was all that now remained of him. Mark hadn't even seen the motion, but she must have hurled them with her tentacles even as she was taking off.

The impact was a thing of complete insanity. Mark felt that no one had seen anything remotely resembling this attack since long before life itself had ventured from the oceans. Somehow the man was still standing, completely whole and making no move to escape. Just before Candice crashed into him, slavering maw opened wide, her entire jawline extended from her mouth in a way that Mark had never even seen, owing to her shark bits. As the jaws clasped, she immediately entered a death roll, spinning round and round as her teeth dug into the man's body.

Or at least, where his body should have been. Strangely, he was still standing, completely safe and with an expression that Mark couldn't be sure exhibited awe or terror. Candice paused for just an instant, alternating between confusion and planning her next attack. She used her body's momentum to spin around entirely, swinging her serpentine tail in his direction. That part of her body passed through the man as easily as the rest of her had, although Candice's tail had managed to fell three large trees.

Mark was in awe of the power Candice possessed. The entire attack had taken at most five seconds, and she had effortlessly changed the landscape of the area surrounding the cave. Mark had come to think of his fiance--no, his wife--as dependent on him, even helpless and weak at times. He sometimes needed reminding of just how strong she really was.

Candice advanced on the unhurt man as he turned around to face her. Her mouth was open, drool pouring from it in long strings that matched the slime dripping from her extended claws and scythes. "Who ARE you?! Are you Death?!" Her voice was a scream, bordering on madness. Scythes flew, tentacles slammed, jaws clamped, all to no avail. "You have to tell me if you're Death! It's the law!" When the dirt thrown up from her melee started to make her cough, she finally stopped her attack. She moaned out the words "Why can't I kill you?" while somehow maintaining a low growl the entire time.

Mark was the one who answered: "Because he's not there." He began descending the rocky embankment that led to the mouth of the cave. "Right? You're a hologram?"

The man turned to face Mark, all the while trying to keep Candice in sight as she instinctively sought to circle behind his back in order to strike his blind side. Despite being in no danger, he was definitely shaken over the savage display. "I-I'm a Scorpio, actually," he stammered. "But, yes, I'm not really here."

Candice started to lunge again before the rational parts of her mind began to reassert themselves. She was mewling piteously, upset that she hadn't killed her prey. She obviously recognized him, and Mark realized that he did indeed look slightly familiar.

Mark approached the man, standing an arms length from him. He realized he must be quite a sight after living in a cave, his short beard disheveled, his bare chest scratched in several places from slipping on jagged rocks. "I didn't realize the U.S. government had that level of technology."

"Just as you no doubt didn't realize we were that far along in biological manipulation, Dr. Clark." He shook his head and smiled. "Mark Clark. What a name. They're careful to keep projects separated at Rocketjet Aerodyne in a way that keeps one group's advancements unknown from another group. Can't let anyone see the big picture. Tends to increase the possibility of a leak when one of their employees happens to develop a conscience about the unethical work they do."

The absurd name of his and Candice's former employer sounded as strange in Mark's ears as the first time he had heard it spoken aloud. However, the name had jarred something else in his memory. "That's where I recognize you from?" Mark asked. "You worked for them."

"Technically they worked for me. Or, my employer I mean. Defense contracting is a silly business, as I'm sure you're aware." Candice slithered closer to Mark, taking his hand. The tall man noticed the gesture, as his expression seemed strangely saddened. "I'm, um ... Well, 'sorry' sounds very inadequate, given the recent events in your lives, I'm sure. But I guess that's still the best word. I'm sorry this happened to you--to the both of you, but especially to you, Dr. Paul."

Candice was visibly shaking, not from fear or sadness but from an anger Mark doubted any sapient being could begin to comprehend. "You ... ruined ... everything."

The tall man looked at the ground. "We did. We certainly did. I certainly did." When he made eye contact, he had a strange smile. "And I'd like to make it up to you, which, yes, sounds rather as insane to me as it must to you. We've been monitoring your activities since you escaped, although we DID lose you for several hours just after the jet drew a bead on you. How did you manage to stay hidden for so long? Some sort of natural camouflage or burrowing ability or--"

"We kissed," Candice answered. "In a lake."

The man's brow wrinkled in confusion. He looked to Mark, waiting on a better explanation, but Mark's response was just to shrug his shoulders and nod in affirmation. "We kissed in a lake."

"I see," answered the man who most certainly did not see. "You popped up in this forest after a time, but thankfully I had become involved in the search project by that point. I've been distracting them ever since. By 'them,' I mean law enforcement. FBI, CIA, local jurisdiction. We've even had help from the United Nations Peacekeeping forces, if you can believe that. You've become something of an international incident, I'm afraid. Everyone is very interested in the strange creature that escaped from a secret American underground base and crashed near a local Starbucks."

Mark's reply was a simple question: "Then why aren't we dead?"

"You are," answered the man before pointing at them with gun-fingers and making a "pow" noise at the both of them. After seeing Candice's jaws begin to open wide again, he continued, "At least in the eyes of the legal system. We faked your death, Candice. You were apparently a genetically engineered, barely sentient lab experiment that managed to escape a government lab. Hannity still rants about you most nights. Tragically, I'm afraid both Doctor Candice Paul and Doctor Mark Clark were both mauled to death by said horrible monster as it escaped." He nodded politely to Candice. "No offense, of course. I guess technically we faked your death twice."

"I win," Candice whispered. "Two-to-one."

"You told them we were dead?" asked Mark. "Candice and I were killed by ... Candice?"

"Basically, yes. There was no way I wanted them knowing that Candice was the 'flying snake thing,' as she's elegantly referred to in civilized circles. You may be pleased to learn that you both died rather heroically, holding the monster at bay just long enough for the rest of your colleagues--who don't exist of course--to escape. A soon-to-be-married couple fighting off government tyranny, after a fashion? You're actually regarded as heroes on most right-wing news platforms."

"Oh, fuck me, I'm a mutant and a Fox News talking point?" Candice covered her eyes with a paw. "Can I BE dead? Like, for real this time? Right now, please."

The man smiled. "I'm afraid that's not a bargain I'm willing to make today, no. But I did come with something of an offer." He paused, giving Mark and Candice time to look at each other in confusion before turning their attention back to him. "You can't stay here. Or anywhere, really. It's going to be the Bonnie & Clyde lifestyle for you, albeit hopefully without the bank robbing and murder. As long as you can keep moving from place to place, I can keep federal law enforcement looking the other way. You may be not-really-dead, but the first time some hiker comes up here and sees you alive then ... well, you'll likely be the real thing in a few hours. Local law enforcement is harder to distract than federal forces for me, but as long as you can keep moving around and keep a low profile I think I'll be able to keep the both of you relatively safe."

"Who ..." Mark shook his head. "Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm ..." The man paused as if to consider his own identity. "I'm someone who happened to develop a conscience about the unethical work we do. I'm high enough up the ladder that I can keep powerful people away from you."

"Wait," Candice interrupted. "You're ... Are there aliens in Roswell?"

"Excuse me?"

"Did I stutter? Are there aliens in Roswell? Are you that high up the ladder, you creepy fucking spook?"

"Oh!" He laughed. "Yes, I'm high enough up the ladder to know that, no, there are in fact no aliens in Roswell Air Force Base."

Candice disappointingly muttered the word "Fuck" under her breath.

"So that's it then?" It was Mark's turn to be angry, although he had serious doubts about his ability to throw a car-sized boulder at the holographic projection addressing them. "We run. For the rest of our lives, we run. And the best you can do after ruining my wife's life--ruining BOTH our lives--is to maybe make the FBI look the other way?" Candice squeezed his hand again at the word "wife."

The man turned and pointed back to the clearing Candice had created. A small drone suddenly appeared, lowering to the ground a white cardboard box. "Not exactly," replied the man. "There is one other certain group that may be able to provide you with some measure of assistance should you reach out to them. A religious community founded by one of your former colleagues--no one you've ever met, of course. Seems to take 'returning to our roots' in a rather strange biological direction. We don't expect it to remain operational for very long. I believe you may find several people there in a similar situation to yourself, Dr. Paul."

The man cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes, suddenly seeming rather tired. "We have an ... informant ... within said community. Definitely not a true believer, which works well in your favor. She's more along for the ride in order for certain biological ... 'enhancements' ... that were promised and delivered to her. I use the word extremely loosely. She's a good person, brilliant in her own strange way, but after speaking with her for any length of time you really might be asking me to send the F-16s back after you. But she'll certainly be able to provide you with some measure of safety and perhaps a safe house or two for you to find temporary lodging. It would, at the least, be a good place for you to start."

The tall man motioned for them to follow as he walked in the direction of the box the drone had dropped off. "You'll want to travel at night. Fly high enough that you won't be seen, but not high enough that you'll be picked up on civilian or local police radar systems. Inside this box you'll find the coordinates for the ... denomination, I guess would be the word ... in question. You'll also find some household items you may have been lacking. Toothpaste, toiletries, bottled water, that sort of thing. I imagine you've been wanting those for a while now. You'll also find a personal belonging that I imagine you may want to hold onto."

The stranger turned to face them as he raised the gray box he had been carrying the whole time, his thumb on a large red button on its side. "I'm ... Well, I was going to say 'sorry' again, but that's as inadequate now as it was ten minutes ago. But ... I am. It wasn't my intention for either of you to be placed in this situation. Your former employer, Mr. Lohrenz, bears most of the blame. He requested you both to be personally experimented on and put through his little 'post-apocalypse' charade. He had hoped to keep you willing to remain cooperative given there was no outside world for you to escape to and by appealing to your need to help humanity rebuild. I'm glad to see he was wrong in this assumption." He paused. "But his company's contract fell under my direct supervision, so if you want to blame me it's certainly understandable. But please believe me when I say that I never wanted this to happen, and if I can spend the rest of my life trying to make your lives a little easier then that's what I'll do. Goodbye, and please be careful."

"Wait!" Candice screamed, even as the stranger's hologram disappeared. "Fuck!" The chimera roared again in frustration.

Mark stared at the box. For a moment he thought it could be a bomb or a tracking device or something, but that wouldn't have made sense. The stranger had known where they were and if he had wanted them dead then he wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of speaking to them. His story made sense, or at least as much sense as anything had these past few days. With Candice still growling and cursing behind him, he walked over to the simple cardboard box and tore it open. True to his word, the stranger's box did not contain an explosive, but was filled with toothpaste, water, and several other sorely-needed supplies. He began to pull them from the box to examine the other items towards the bottom. At the very bottom, tucked inconspicuously in the corner as if it were an afterthought was a small container, its lid rather well ordained, like whatever was inside was something expensive. It looked strangely familiar to Mark, almost reminding him of ...

"No," he whispered.

By this point, Candice had made her way over to him, her curiosity finally overtaking her ire. "Wow. That's my exact brand of toothpaste. And your shampoo. And those little granola bar things I love that you hate, which makes me love them more. How did they ... How much spying were these fuckers doing on us? What's that?"

With trembling hands, Mark lifted the tiny container, his dirty thumb slowly pressing open the lid, making him feel like he was rubbing excrement across some holy thing. "It can't be," he whispered. But it was. He knew before he even opened the lid that it was. He cradled it to his chest as he opened it, its contents bearing the one object in his life upon which he'd ever really put any kind of sentimental attachment.

Candice couldn't make out the item with Mark cradling it. "What is it? What is it?" She covered her snout up with a paw when she realized Mark was crying. "Mark, baby, what the fuck is--" She gasped as Mark showed her the ring, the dull fossilized tree resin looking dull in the approaching dusk. Her sister had whispered to her about how dull it was, almost ugly. But to the pair of them, the strangest couple the world had ever known even before all of this insanity had happened, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Candice's engagement ring.

Both were speechless. Neither thought they'd ever see it again. How could they? It had been taken away along with everything the both of them were wearing when they were abducted. Mark had thought it had likely been destroyed or shoved into some evidence box and tucked into a warehouse along with the Ark of the Covenant. He slowly turned around, moving into a kneeling position that he hoped didn't look as silly as he felt it must have. "Um ... Still want to get married?"

Tears were rolling down Candice's eyes in eight separate trails. She slowly nodded. It took her a moment before she could say anything. "I don't--" She choked back a lump in her throat. "I don't think it'll fit anymore. My fingers are too big." She held her paws up and flexed her claws. "I guess I don't even really have fingers. Really."

She was right of course. It certainly couldn't slip over her paw's digits. Mark examined the ring, turning it over a few times in his palm before he managed, just barely, to slip it onto his pinky finger. "No, but it'll fit on mine."

Candice's sobs let him know that she took his meaning. Mark was showing her that no matter how their lives had been destroyed, they were still bound together in their love. Nothing had changed in that regard. Nothing ever would. "Get up here, you," she said.

Mark rose to his feet and embraced her, the pair sharing a short laugh as his head came halfway up to her topmost set of breasts. "I forget how fucking tall you are."

She nodded. "Yeah. Just means we should hug more often. I-- Mark, I--."

"I know. I love you, too."

She squeezed him harder. "So very much."

They kissed and held each other until the sun was fully down. Mark couldn't guess how much time had passed as they stood there wrapped in each other's arms. It really didn't matter. When Candice finally let go, he took a step back, still holding onto her paws. "We should get moving. You can fly at night, right? Long distances, I mean?"

She nodded. "Yeah. It's actually easier at night, strangely. Did you get the coordinates for the crazy cult thing? Do we even want to go there?"

"I think it's a good start. There's a flashlight in the box. Let's maybe head up to those mountains and then we'll take a better look. It feels weird staying around here when we know that they know where we are. Or at least one of them does."

"Should we get anything from inside? The blanket maybe? It's kinda slimy."

"Yeah, I guess so. I'm going to miss this place. Never thought I'd be happy living in a cave."

"Yeah," Candice replied. "Spooky cave with a big ol' monster and everything. How cliche." She laughed. "Let's go. Bail?"

It was his turn to laugh. It was the last question he had asked her just before they escaped the underground lab. He returned the same answer she had given him: "Bail."

"I'll grab it." Candice turned towards the cave, slithering on her long tail, but paused after she had gone a few feet. "Mark?"

"Yes, babe?"

"We really do need to find a box."

NOW

Death didn't feel quite so bad to Mark. Very warm, a little gooey. He imagined this is what it felt like in the womb. Soft hands were rubbing his face, a warm, shifting sensation below him indicating he was probably laying on top of something alive. A familiar, whispering voice was repeating, "It'll be alright. You'll be alright. Please be alright." The words made him feel like he was in a safe place. It was a bit constrictive though. Powerful muscles were holding him still, keeping him from taking a deep breath. He began to struggle, mindless contentment giving way to quiet uncertainty giving way to strangling panic.

An immense weight was suddenly taken off of him as he gasped for air, drips of what was surely embryonic goo dripping into his mouth as he sucked into his lungs the humid air, mixed with the smell of some sort of large animal. His eyes slowly began to focus, revealing what must have been Yeats's rough beast, its hour come round at last. As reality started to intrude on his alarm he slowly recognized the face of his wife and fellow monster. "What ... happened?" he croaked.

"Oh God, Mark! Holy fuck, Mark! You're okay?! What happened? What happened?! YOU tell ME what happened!" Candice held Mark's still limp form away from her with her pantherine arms, four sets of golden eyes examining his face, searching for some further sign that he was alive. "Did you ... take drugs?! What kind of drugs? Are you fucking crazy?" His head was pressed left and right by large paws, their pads feeling soft and cool against his cheeks. She was looking into his eyes, likely searching for any symptoms of a bad withdrawal. "Baby are you ... are you okay? Did you try to kill--to HURT yourself? Baby, please talk to me!"

Mark nodded. "It's okay. I'm fine. It's okay. Didn't try to kill myself." It took a few moments before he could catch his breath. "Can you let me go? Let me untangle my tail?"

"Tail?! What?!" Candice lay a tentacle across Mark's forehead, although the warm slime she secreted probably didn't help her tell if Mark was running a fever or not. "Did you say tail?! Are you still high? Fuck damnit, Maaaark!" The way she whined was still as cute now as it was when she was human.

Mark wasn't high. On the contrary, he felt like he had recently lost a battle against Jose Cuervo. Or several battles. Perhaps the entire war had been lost. "Yeah, my tail. Not used to it, baby. Don't know how it--" Mark finally looked down at his tail, or lack thereof. Expecting to find a chimera more-or-less resembling the one he was in love with, he instead found a rather scrawny pink ape-like creature wearing jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt soaked in sweat and slime. Mark wasn't a monster. Mark was a Mark.

"Mark, I'm fighting an uphill battle not to lose my fucking mind here." Candice uncoiled the length of her tail from Mark's legs. "What--exactly--did you take? This?" Candice reached down with a tentacle and picked up the vial that contained the fluid that was supposed to cause him to horribly mutate into something less than human and more than animal. Instead it had left him with a bad hangover. Had he taken it? The way Candice was holding it indicated that he had consumed the liquid. Was the transformation temporary? Then what had he just had sex with? And why was his throat not laying in red strips all around him? Was the whole thing some hallucination? Something their government contact had given to ... to what? What was the point of tricking him?

Candice's demeanor suddenly shifted from alarm to barely contained wrath. Her round ears flattened down, revealing the horns that Mark sometimes forgot she had poking from her matted mane. "Mark? What is in this vial?" As she lifted the vial, it gave a rattling noise, like there was something inside of it. "And why does it smell like steel and ... cold sterile air and ... Burt Reynolds? Mark, what the fuck did you do?!"

Mark had fucked up. He knew he had fucked up, just as he knew as he was "changing" that he was fucking up, just as he knew when he met that lanky son of a bitch in the back alley that he was soon to fuck up. "I ... I fucked up, didn't I?"

"Mark." Her eyes were looking at him like a python would examine a rat. For once she wasn't drooling; her face seemed carved out of granite. The only part of her face not still was her nose, which flared in and out in an effort to maintain her composure. "I am going to ask again. Wait, no I'm not. I'm not going to ask again. You are going to tell me what was in this fucking vial or I'm going to tear you apart and throw you into that ocean. Metaphorically. Spiritually. Emotionally. Maybe physically, that's not off the table. Proceed." As she said the last word she was making a conscious effort not to show her fangs.

Mark slumped to a sitting position. "It was supposed to ... It was supposed to make me ... like you."

"Like ... Mark, what the fuck did you do?"

"It was supposed to make me like you, okay? That tall skinny bastard gave it to me. At my request. It was supposed to--" Mark's voice cracked. He wasn't usually one to show any sort of emotion, but this had shaken him to his core.

"Fuck you." Mark looked at his wife, the hurt in his eyes paling before that on her face. "We're done. I'll drop you off at a bus station or something. You can take what money we have in your bag. It should get you back to the clinic or Atlanta or-or-or wherever the fuck you want to go. I don't care." She was trembling. This was going so wrong. "Why the fuck would you do that? We're fucking done."

"Candice? Candy, baby--"

"Don't fucking call me that!" She managed to roar, hiss, and scream at him all at once. "I fucking hate that name! Why?! Why the fuck would you do it?! You want to be like this?!"

"No! I mean ... Can we just talk?" He held his hands up in a disarming motion. "Please don't go. I ... I don't think I could handle that. That's what I was trying to avoid." Just breathe, old man, he thought. You can do this.

"Talk!" Mark had never heard her this loud. He kept glancing at her twitching mantis arms.

Mark nodded rapidly. "Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you." He tried to gather his thoughts. He wished his head would stop pounding. "Do you remember the time a few years ago when you slipped and broke your ankle?"

Candice turned her head at a 45 degree angle to one side. It reminded him of a retriever he'd had when he was a kid. There was no canine DNA in Candice, but some other animal must have the same general indication of curiosity. Maybe the bird? "What?! I-I think so. Yeah. Maybe. Why?" She looked at him like he was explaining to her that he still believed in the Easter bunny as someone who was over forty.

Mark nodded. "Maybe? Maybe. You barely remember. You know what happens when a horse twists its ankle? Sometimes they have to be put down. They can't recover sometimes. You had a broken ankle--a badly broken ankle. You were injured for ... what, twelve seconds? Ten? It healed almost instantly. Like you said your tongue healed when we were with Smiles in the lab. It was sliced off and it regrew immediately. And the damn machine even said that you could lose a limb and it would regrow. Your cells don't replicate when they need to, it's more like they're trying to replicate constantly and they're just waiting on an opportunity. If someone tried to slice your arm off, the parts that were severed would already have grown back together before the blade sliced all the way through the other side."

"So? The fuck does that have to do with ... this?" She shook the vial as it rattled again. Why was it rattling? "We both already knew this--"

"Candice, what happens when I get the flu?" He was shaking. "Fuck, baby, I stubbed my toe last week and it still fucking hurts."

Candice's head was rapidly approaching the 90 degree mark. "The flu?!"

"Baby, I'll be 41 in another couple of months. What happens when I'm 60? 70? All the tests we've run on you say that your cells haven't aged a day. More than that, it's like you're in your twenties. The normal wear and tear that leads to aging is treated like a cut-off-tongue for you. The cells repair that, too. You're functionally immortal. And I'm ..." He let the thought hang in the air.

"That's it? You want to live forever? You want to live forever like this?" She motioned at her body, unfurling her wings as if to show it off to him like he'd never seen it before. "A freak? I have six tits and two of them are udders. Eight if you count the teats. And slime, and squid arms, and dicks, and-and ..."

"No, God damn it!" He didn't mean to sound angry, he was just having such a hard time forming his thoughts. "That's not what I mean."

"Then start. Making. Sense."

He suddenly felt weaker than he had in his entire life. He spoke slowly and softly, though he knew that she could hear him easily even at a whisper. "One day I'll be too old to do the whole Bonnie and Clyde thing we've got going on. One day I'll be too old to follow you."

"Then we figure something out! Find another cave! Make the goofy donkey doctor figure out a place we can stay permanently."

He shook his head. "That won't work for long and you know it. We'll always be on the move, either running from someone or just moving around to find you enough food to keep you healthy without raising suspicion. I'll be too old to follow you when I'm 70 or 80 or whatever and ... and you'll be alone."

Candice spit in disgust on the ground, strings of drool connecting her maw to the sand for a few long moments. "So that's it? You think I can't live without you? Like I can't take care of myself and--"

"No!"

"WHAT THEN?!" The fur on the back of her neck was standing straight up. Slime and saliva fell from row upon row upon row of teeth far larger than anything in this epoch should possess. The light of reason was leaving her eyes, being replaced by the cold hunger of an arachnid. The mantis limbs that Mark was still afraid of had contracted, ready to strike. For the first time in a while, Mark felt genuine fear of the woman he loved, of the thing she had become.

"It's the other way around." Despite the fear on his face, reflected back at him from eight feral orbs, he made himself maintain eye contact. It was the exact wrong thing to do when facing down a violent animal. It was the right thing to do when facing his life partner. "I can't live without YOU."

She took one step, then another, bending low in what he hoped didn't indicate she was going to pounce on him. But the words must have clicked in the human part of her brain. She blinked her numerous eyes and rational thought seemed to return. "What?" Her voice wasn't her own now, it was like it was coming from the throat of some large underwater predator.

"I wanted to be a good doctor, Candice. A good scientist. Everything I could've done with my life ... I don't care about any of it. None of it. Not anymore. Meeting you was ..." Mark swallowed the lump in his throat. He wasn't afraid of her anymore. He wouldn't dishonor her by acting like she was a monster. "Candice, you are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I know you hate what was done to you, but ... I wouldn't trade these years we've had together for anything in the world. Anything. If I had to choose between the world and you, I'm choosing you. But ... knowing that you'll have to leave me behind one day. The thought of having to watch you turn around and go and I'll never see you again? Baby, I can't stand the thought of that. That exact moment when you turn to leave, it's the scariest thing I could ever think of. I don't want to have to watch you leave me behind. I don't want that to happen."

Candice stood upright, or as upright as she ever did. She didn't say a word.

"I don't want you to have to leave me. I couldn't take watching you turn your back on me for the last time and fly away. I think every day about how horrible that will feel." Mark kept his composure for another two seconds before he completely broke apart. Sobbing, he managed to get out the words he had avoided for so long. "I don't want to say goodbye."

Candice wasn't even looking at him, just staring off into nothingness. Mark hoped she hadn't somehow missed everything he had said. He knew he couldn't say those things again. He didn't have it in him. He wasn't strong enough. When she finally looked in his direction again it was only for a moment. What followed was a violent cacophony of screams, snarls, hisses, roars, and human anguish--all at the same time. The noise was a maddening chorus no living being should ever be able to make. It stretched on for what seemed like minutes, although Mark wasn't sure if that was just because he was so anxious to hear what she would say next.

When she finally stopped her howling she was out of breath. Panting and wiping drool on the back of her paw, she finally spoke. Her voice was raspy, like she had torn something in the back of her throat. If so, it would be repaired before she finished her next sentence. "I swear to fuck ... if you didn't mean all of that sappy shit I will fucking drop you into a volcano. I can do that. I've got wings. I mean literally ALL of it." It finally registered to Candice that Mark was still violently sobbing. "Hey. Hey, stop. Hey hey hey. Come here." She held her arms out, pulling him in for a hug with her tentacles. He felt her heart hammering away inside her breast. He loved that sound; he had always loved it. He was never happier than hearing it. It was the best, most familiar noise in the world. It was her. "Come here, you fucking idiot." She rubbed his back with her topmost arms and wrapped her tentacles around him. Even the damned mantis scythes seemed to embrace him in their own strange way. Her voice came out as a whisper, "This whole time I've been the one relying on you. Now you're telling me it's the other way around. God damnit, why won't you let me hate you for like five fucking minutes?"

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I'm-I'm sorry."

Now Candice was weeping slightly, all the while whispering the words "fucking" and "idiot". After a while, she pushed him away just enough to look into his eyes. For once, she didn't even have anything dripping off of her chin. "Mark ... Sometimes I feel like a dog that's being beaten, curled up in the corner just wanting the pain to be over one way or the other. Except the thing that's hitting me is my own body." She pulled him into her breast, holding him tighter. She was shaking, mournful, but still not as emotionally broken as he was. "I'll never drive a car again. Never play mini-golf. I know you hated it, but I love mini-golf. I'll never be anything but slimy and huge. I'm always hungry, and I smell terrible. I'll never ..." She paused. He got the feeling that she had to concentrate to get her next words out. "I'll never see my sister again. Or my mom." Mark could barely hear her next words, but he would've known what she was saying even if he didn't hear her at all. "I'll never be a mom." She shook her head. "No. You don't want this."

"I know." For the moment, Mark was able to stop crying and get a few words out. "I know. I mean, you hide it well. The others we know always say that you're so upbeat, like you don't have a care in the world. But you can't hide it all the time. Not from me."

"I'll never be able to hold your hand. Not in a real, human hand. I'll never be able to kiss you in public. I can't BE in public. I'll never finish the work I always dreamed would make the world a better place. If the same thing happened to you it would kill me. Mark, I'm not depressed because I'm the only one of my kind. I don't want you to be another me. I'm depressed because I am what I am. But ..."

Together they slid to the ground, still holding each other. Mark was hoping she'd never let go, although he knew that one day she would. She'd let go and never hold him again. Maybe it wouldn't happen today or tomorrow but sometime that day would come. He hoped he would die before that happened.

"The way people look at me ..." Candice continued. "Even the other weird animal-people friends we've made over the years. They all look at me like I'm a monster. Everyone, even the fucking donkey. But you?" She laughed and released him enough to be able to look at him. There was genuine joy in her eyes. "You look at me like I decided to wear a new hat. You love me and accept me despite what happened. Despite what I am. That's more than I could ever hope for. You-You MARRIED me. All I've ever wanted since this happened was for us to be together every day. As for the other stuff, the ... having to leave stuff ... Let's deal with that when the time comes, okay?"

It wasn't okay, but he still nodded like it was. Maybe pretending that an inevitable pain wasn't going to occur was the best way of dealing with it.

"The two of us being together is what keeps me going."

"Me too, sweetheart," he answered. "Me too."

They lay on the warm sand, not saying anything, just holding one another. Finally she laughed. Her laughter sounded the same as before all of this happened. "But you'd look super hot as a chimera monster, though. It was ... supposed to make you like me? Like, exactly like me?"

Mark nodded. "Yeah. Only I guess the ... hallucinations were a little off. It wasn't exactly the same. The arms were reversed and a few other things. But mostly everything was identical."

Candice's ears perked up. "Really?" She sounded upbeat, even curious. "What was the biggest difference?"

Mark pointed at his head. "No lion bits. I was a hedgehog. I mean, part of me was a hedgehog."

"Ew!" She closed four of her eyes and stuck her tongue three feet from her lips. "That ... actually sounds kind of horrible for some reason. Were you a blue hedgehog at least?"

Mark was extremely confused. "Blue? Um ... no? Why would I be blue? Are there blue hedgehogs?"

Candice laughed at something he had said, although he couldn't fathom what was so funny. "Never mind. I keep forgetting that you had no childhood." She leaned her head down, pressing it into his chest in the way he loved so much. He moved to kiss her on the forehead, but she slowly pulled her head away and stuck her tongue out. He thought she must be leaning in for a kiss, but instead she wrapped her tongue around his throat several times, placed her maw around his entire neck, and lightly pressed her teeth against his skin, careful not to injure him. The way her tongue was in this awkward position, Mark could barely make out what she said next. It sounded almost like "See this? Feel this?"

"Um, yes? What are you--?"

"Don't ever do anything this stupid again. I'll fucking squish you. Okay?"

"Copy that."

She released her hold and returned her head to his chest. "Good boy. If you changed, who would buy me--oh shit!"

"What? What is it?"

"You owe me SO many fucking tater tots after this."

LATER

The sun was rising by the time they finally stood up. Mark wasn't sure if he'd slept all night or if they'd just held each other. Candice walked to the empty vial, and lightly shoved it with her hoof. "Wait, what is ..." She lifted the vial and shook it. Again, the same rattling noise as before. "Mark, do you take your mutant juice on the rocks or something? What else is in here?"

"No, wait, what the fuck?" Candice handed the not-so-empty vial to Mark, who turned it upside down. Another vial dropped into his hand. The rattling had been caused by a smaller vial inside the main one. This one contained a similar black liquid but with something written on the side. "What is this? More hallucinogen? Why in the fuck would he want me to go through that again? Unless ... Wait, what's this?" Mark squinted in the early morning light. There was something written on the side of the vial-inside-the-vial. He read it aloud slowly as he made out the words. "'The ... worst' ... Fuck, there's not enough light in here."

Candice held out a paw. "Let me see." He handed it over. With her scotopic vision she was easily able to make out the writing. "It says, 'The worst thing in the world.' That's ... That's from ..."

Mark looked at Candice as if she had the answer. It sounded awfully familiar. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"Room 101. Remember?"

"What?"

"'Everyone knows what is in Room 101, Winston.'"

Mark blinked. "Orwell? 1984?"

Candice nodded. "Remember with the hologram? The first time we met the creepy fucker? He was quoting Orwell."

"Oh," Mark replied. "Holy shit. Why? What the fuck does that mean?"

"I dunno." Candice handed the vial back over. She likely wanted it as far away from her as she could. "He's crazy, remember? What do you think it means?"

"I think it's ... Wait." Mark dropped the second vial to the ground, the black goo inside clawing at the sides like a living thing as it hit the sand. "When he gave it to me, he said not to take it. He said I was an idiot."

Candice nodded. "He was right about that. Broken clock and all that. You are indeed a fucking idiot."

Mark continued as if he hadn't heard her. "He said it was the worst thing in the world. This is--"

"Oh shit, Mark." The pair looked at each other. As usual, they had arrived at the realization at the exact same time. "That's the real thing! That would actually turn you into a ... into a me!"

The pair looked at the vial where it lay like it was an incendiary device just waiting to go off. On reflex they reached out to the other, Mark taking Candice's tentacle in his hand.

"So ... this is the real thing?" Mark asked. "The other one was just a hallucinogen. A very lifelike hallucinogen. I had him send a little bit of whatever he gave me to Haley. She confirmed it was the real deal. But maybe he wanted me to see what it would be like before I really did it?"

"The worst thing in the world. Always try before you buy."

The pair were silent for a while, again staring at the black liquid inside the vial. Mark could swear he could see it moving on its own, writhing as if trying to escape. He finally asked, "What do we do with it? Pour it out?"

"Fuuuuuck that. We'd have mutant earthworms or crabs or something crawling around by the end of the day. And if it somehow got into the ocean who knows WHAT the fuck that would do. Or the water supply?"

"Yeah, okay. Fire?"

"You want to breathe in this shit? Or have it drift downwind and be breathed in by an entire town or something?"

"Yeah." For once, Mark and Candice weren't finishing each other's sentences. Candice was way ahead of him on this, and he was happy she was. "Give it to the donkey?"

Candice looked at Mark as if he had said the dumbest thing the world had ever heard. "Are you serious? Give that? To HER? Remember that time they had to evacuate a town when she tried to make popcorn? She would bumble-fuck her way into the mutant monster apocalypse in a week tops. 'Oopsie-daisy, that's a yikes, guess everyone is a mutant now.'" It was a bad impression of their friend, but he still laughed. "'Why does this always happen to me? Caused the death of humanity. This is just like the one time in high school I blah blah blah blah.'"

"Point. Okay ... then what?"

Candice picked it up with a tentacle, turned it over and over, examined the words written on the top before finally handing it back to Mark. "We keep it."

"What?!"

Candice nodded. "We keep it. And ... we use it."

"What?!" he repeated. "After all that last night?! What happened to ...?! You want me to--"

"Not now, moron!" she interrupted. "Keep it until ... You know. You start to get old and gray. Not now, but ... Maybe someday. Maybe."

Mark examined the vial for another moment before sliding it into his backpack right next to the Boggle box. "Why not just take it now then? Why wait?"

Candice shook her head. "Were you not listening last night?" She pulled him into a warm, gooey hug. "Because I love you being you. You oblivious asshole."

"Oh." Mark tossed the bag to the side. "I guess that makes sense, yeah. I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

"I'm fucking starving! Do you want to make a fire and cook the fish I caught for you before you became so incredibly stupid yesterday?" More drool. She really was hungry.

Mark nodded. "I think we can stretch this out for another day. I like it here. Maybe just hang out on the beach? I could read to you."

"That sounds good! Just no Orwell."

"No Orwell," he agreed. "What are we going to do tomorrow?"

Candice looked into his eyes just the same way she had years ago when he first told her that he loved her. Those eyes looked so very different from how they looked that day, but they were still very much the same in every way that mattered. "Whatever we want," she finally answered.

TOO SOON

Mankind finally created its last mistake, its last pathetic betrayal of itself, its last rape of what it could have been. The needs of the few finally outweighed the needs of the many, all due to its own greed, its own hubris, its own sad inability to be merely happy.

Michelangelo carved David into existence, doing a better job of his creation than when the artist's own Maker had sculpted His first human. Beethoven made whatever gods watched over this world weep with his Ode to Joy. Braun made the semiconductor, birthing into the world magic beyond anything the Babylonians ever could've dreamt when they told of Gilgamesh.

And the Earth doesn't care. Thousands of years have passed since the world was enveloped in orange light and black smoke, when screaming children were engulfed in fire as the buildings fell on them and adults ran into whatever body of water they could find trying in vain to extinguish the flames. David was crushed to pieces, his caretakers abandoning him just as God had done to His greatest creation so long ago. The Ode disappeared from the minds of any human capable of crying at its wondrous, simple beauty. The semiconductors helped to end the world.

Mother Earth simply no longer cares, if She ever did. At first, She was glad to be rid of the silly little primates and glad to be back to business as usual after She was so hurt by their brief existence. Now that millennia have passed, She can barely remember they ever existed.

Nothing beside remains, round the decay of that colossal wreck that mankind once laughably called its aspirations, its glory. Nothing except for the two of them.

Every day the green vines tear down what remains of mankind's structures. And on this day, like every day, what is left of Earth's true children, Her deer and Her birds and Her lizards, look above as they witness two shadows passing above, three sets of wings holding each aloft and a long scaly tail trailing behind the both of them as they pass. They are always twisting, circling, diving, dancing, darting, reveling in the joy of being together despite the world having torn itself apart. Sometimes one will sing a song that not even the end of the world could have fully erased. Then the other will usually mock the first's singing, only to be playfully growled at and chased through the air.

Sounds that seem so strange to the deer and the birds and the lizards always seem to surround the odd flying things. But one sound is always present.

More than anything else, the one sound that fills the air whenever they are near is the simple laughter of two monsters who will never have to be apart.

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