Ly Faulk

One horrid morning, it awoke to find that it had transformed into a human. It’s first indication that something was wrong was that smell, that thick, meaty human smell that made it want to wash its antennas. It was afraid it was in danger of being squished so it started skittering away before it even opened its eyes. Then it stopped at the sickening sight of itself. A huge tube of a body with almost no curves, no sturdy exoskeleton, and, worst of all, no wings. It was on all its limbs as one should be but that was hurting its lower legs so it shakily stood up as it had often seen humans do. Only having four appendages was disorienting and it was a long while before it mastered walking without falling. 

Its stomach told it that it was time to eat so it spent some time trying to fit under the door crack to go hunting for food until it realized its enormous body would never fit. Some time later, it worked out how to use its top legs to manipulate the door and get out of the suddenly small room. (It had seemed so big the night before!) Outside it was dark and the hustle and bustle of humans roaming around hurt its ears but its stomach kept it going. Some humans seemed frightened of it and many shouted at it in their weird, loud voices. It spotted a pair of humans eating and grabbed the food from their filthy upper legs and shoved it into its new mouth. It was hard to chew with the dull teeth in its head but it managed to swallow it. The male shouted at it and squared up, the universal language of wanting to kick someone’s ass. It hissed at him until they both ran away, the female shouting at the male as they went. 

As it roamed the crowd looking for more food, it noticed a difference between itself and the other humans. They were all wearing strange coverings whereas its long tube of a body was bare. It stopped in a room that had a large amount of these coverings. Someone shouted at it but it was getting used to it and ignored them. Grabbing what it could, it draped it all over its body and skittered away again.

Not so many people shouted at it after that, but they seemed to avoid it all the same. It felt lonely, missing its colony and wishing it had a nice female to mate with. 

A delightful odor beckoned it. It followed the scent to a box behind a building. Inside the box was glorious food, raw meat cuttings, grease soaked cardboard, even small amounts of blood. It crawled inside to find that its brethren had all congregated to enjoy the feast. They crawled all over its stupid tube with their perfect brown bodies. Fluid leaked from its eyes as it lay down amongst them, relishing their clean metallic odor. Safe at last, it drifted off to a peaceful slumber.

When it opened its eyes once more, the box seemed huge. It looked down to find that it had been restored to its own body once more. It scurried up the walls and crawled out of a small crack in the top. There, in the morning sun, it stood on its back legs, and waved its antenna to the sky in jubilation, gratitude, relief, and the sun seemed to notice and shone all the brighter.