A bit later, I was walking back into my apartment, a small paper bag in my left hand as I sat it on the counter, taking out a few of those cobalt bottles, there were instructions on the back of the tag. On nights of full moons or nights where withholding the transformation is taxing, drink the whole bottle and stay inside. Your body will still transform, but you will retain your human mind: written across the almost parchment-y tag in this soft, elegant and scrawling script that was…beautiful looking, almost like it wasn’t even handwriting, but that artistically done calligraphy people do.

            I trundled into the bathroom as I looked at myself in the mirror, there were some physical changes I had already taken note of, they weren’t too bad: my eyes had gone from a dark, dark brown to this murky green-gold tone that reminded me of the algae you see covering the surface of a swamp, my nails were now black and pointed and as I moved my hair, my ears were now pointy. There were no scales or anything across my person, but even my toe-nails were black and pointy looking.

            Curious though, I sat on my couch as I used this…much more expansive magical internet to…look that man up, not Jamie, but Alphonse. Both of their numbers along with Andrea were in my phone sense Jamie’s my friend now and Alphonse is technically my pharmacist of some kind. A few things popped up about Alphonse, one of the things that showed up however was a very…very old report of some kind: it was an old…old report or newspaper print of some  it was printed in 1900 by the date on it, talking about some steamer ship that sank outside of Gretna, just a few hours away from where I was now, the ship was considered a total loss and every crew member was pronounced dead, plus a dead stowaway was found, however one body was never recovered…that of a 17 year old cabin boy named Alphonse Steele who’s body was written off as having been swept off by the current or had been dragged out of the water by some sort of animal or…something along those lines. I was mainly looking for any form of social media and while I did find it eventually, it took a bit longer than you’d expect.

            This whole day though…I’ve been feeling just a little off, almost like my apartment was too cold. I stood from the couch as I went back into the bathroom as I rifled around the medicine cabinet for a thermometer and took my own, it was…very wrong, like so wrong that the thermometer just kept flashing an L. I was just confused as that happened as I put my hand to my forehead or the back of my neck as I tried to take my own temperature, but obviously, it’s difficult to take your own temperature without a thermometer. I looked down at my hands as I looked at my nails, softly rubbing my palm with my other thumb as my inky black claws looked back at me. I sighed softly as I looked in the mirror, using my fingers to lift my upper lip a bit to see if my teeth were different looking: spikier, slightly longer, but still fairly humanoid looking, though my canines were long enough that when my mouth was closed there was the slightest amount over overlap of them against each other, my teeth didn’t overlap to the point where the points of my new fangs hit the gums of the opposite jaw, but…close, they were very, very close.

            “Alligator” I whispered to myself as I looked down at my arm, thinking about when I got upset at Jamie and scales appeared across my skin, the moon bracelet on my wrist softly shimmering in the pale florescent light of the bathroom. Thinking about what everyone had been talking about at the meeting and all of their various experiences and things: how meditating inwards and focusing on feeling how ingrained one is to magic is what helps teach the body how to use, control and connect ourselves to our animalistic forms.

            I walked back out into my living room as I sat on the floor, facing the large window and glass door leading onto my excuse of a balcony as I closed my eyes. I had no idea what I was doing, but…this felt like the right thing to do. So, I just…let my train of thought die off and let myself fall into this neutral state as I focused on the things that I did not have to really think about; the sound of my own pulse through my ears, the feeling of the carpet against my legs, the slow and deep pattern of my own breathing…all of those things without any kind of thought needed to process what I was focusing on.

            Slowly out of the darkness of my closed eyes, the edges of my vision slowly faded out of darkness and into this dark, muted and swampy olive green colors, the familiar scent of swamp started to hit my nose; the scent of stagnant water mixed with rotting plants and the various gases released by a swamp’s existence…the sound of crickets, various buzzing bugs and other sounds seemed to lift up to my hearing before the familiar, albeit not too familiar sound of a very low, bass-y growling sound as this pair of glowing yellow eyes opened in front of my vision forcing the swampy view to fade back into darkness as those glowing eyes bore into my very existence.

            I gasped as my head dropped forward as my entire body was trembling, my hands in horrible pain and…covered in blood, the fronts of my fingers split and shredded as my nails were replaced by these giant heavy claws. There was blood on the carpet and my hands felt like  I had put them through an industrial cheese grater…but luckily the panic and adrenaline kept me from feeling the pain as I breathed deeply, my claws sinking back into my fingers as the flesh knit back together and sealed over leaving just the tips of the claws as my black pointy nails.