As Vera Wandlung awoke one morning from uneasy dreams she found herself transformed from an elegant carapascular insect into a large limbmangled beast. The communal comfort of the wetdark loam that impacted around the nest was present but different. No: it was the same, only her scenting of it had changed.
Vera opened her eyes and became aware of expansion. Her normally compact and segregimented body had exploded: the six nimblelimbs had vanished, replaced by four ungainly lumberarms. Her sleekit sheenyshell was soft; a horrorskein dotted with grizzle. There were other appendages not priorly present, but so small they didn’t bear fretting about.
And she was bigger. But still occupying the same nestal dimensions. Vera didn’t understand much about the physical properties of space, but she knew a large thing could not be accommodated inside a smaller. And yet it was so, albeit not comfortably, for the new elements of Vera were crushed over each other, poking holes into the nest. One of the longlimbs had broken through a wall and the nubbinygubbins at the end hung over her neighbour’s sleeping body which—Vera observed enviously—was unchanged. She withdrew the protrusion—the movement resulted in strange sensations that pulsepained her entirety—and packed up the hole.
The pulsing continued for several moments. In those moments Vera attempted to account for her experience. She understood that a transformation had taken place but its nature was unclear. There were creatures for whom change was mandated. The butterfly emerged from her silkshell no longer a grub. Moths grew from larvae. Frogs were formerly tadpoles. But for a creature such as Vera, stasis was a species feature.
And this naming of herself: Vera Wandlung. Who was that? Certainly not her or had been. But here was something: it was her now. There was no evidence of this. Still, she knew. Was possessed of a certainty hitherto unfamiliar. Such assurety was unpleasant. She had known her place in the world and this knowledge had been replaced with a kind she neither recognised nor liked.
Vera’s thoughts were caving in on themselves, her mindwalls crumbling. Formerly-lovely loam mushed wetcold against her face, finding its way into newformed crevices, constricting her from within. Her body was possessed of a slow suspicion that dampity and compactedness were neither desirable nor healthy. Vera surged and jagged limberous; pretty in a panic.
The butterfly emerged from her silkshell no longer a grub. Moths grew from larvae. Frogs were formerly tadpoles. But for a creature such as Vera, stasis was a species feature.
A colloidal catastrophe commenced. Columns and pedical forms collapsed. The earth erupted into the above and Vera emerged gasping into harshlight. She spat out grassicular vegetate and choked in dry air as hundreds of sibilantlings scattergoried over her. A wave of disgust flooded her system—which felt pipelike and skeletal—and she whapped, whoppered and shurryscooed them away. Then—lo! Horror!—a loathsome noise occurred. Not a jubilant stridulation, the call of the swarm or the enticement of some ovipositorous other, but a horlastorm: the crack of the Earth at birth. A howling, shrill and cacophonal, emitting from her unmandibles but originating from her unpartitioned lowerings. A rumbling that roared through her body and spouted in the form of something she understood to be a scream. All things were new. Forever unchanged.
Vera rose. She stumbled and flutterfreshed her wings that were not wings, but unseen and uncomfortable ripplings, and assessed herself.
She was nae:
thorax
pincer
antennae
chitinous
exoskeletal
tripartite
trochanter
beauty.
She was aye:
gangly
appendage
flubbly
meat
indoskeleton
rigidity
unbalance
disgust.
The meat was the worst of everything, covered in a series of wrappings; fabric decoratives she might have past-chewed, regurgitated and converted into nest. Vera identified these as shoes, stockings, skirt…
Many things previously understood were becoming abstract memories. Countless things never even approximately conceived were unaccountably fully-formed and real. Amongst an influx of ideas Vera understood that she was: a mess, dirty and late. She brushed herself down and ran from the burrow, the hillock, the scrub of land that abutted the greenscape, towards the greyscale of the near distance which became understood by her as being roads, streets and offices…
A howling, shrill and cacophonal, emitting from her unmandibles but originating from her unpartitioned lowerings. A rumbling that roared through her body and spouted in the form of something she understood to be a scream.
Some internal antennae guided her to a building whose doors opened on her approach. A worker (the word security neologised) barred her way until a series of cognitive clicks prompted her to reach into a pocket (but what was that?) for her ID (which was also?). An entire world coalesced. Inroads into sense were made. That person was Debbie and could be relied upon. That person was Joanne and could not be trusted. That person was Dennis and was just ugh… How did she even know anyone?
Vera felt homesick and vertiginous. The ID card had her photo on it, but the face that stared at her—dead-eyed and molten—was not one she wanted to see. The person she knew to be Debbie came over brightish and eased. Vera followed her. Debbie chittered about any number of people places and things that Vera couldn’t get a grasp on. It didn’t matter. Here, at least, was a friend.
She followed Debbie to the elevator—a fun old-new word—and rose to the fifteenth floor where Debbie pushed her out, laughing. Vera stumbled to a cluster of cubicles where light failed to fall. Here was vestigial comfort. Lackadaisical creepers clung to felt-a-fabricked walls. A squeakerchair stood next to a desk whose legs were taped up. The desk hosted a keyboard and monitor covered in a plastic hood.
Vera wasn’t immediately cognisant of what she was supposed to do, but do something she did, because her name was embossed on a nameplate, along with a photograph of a meatpink creature and two awful-looking bugs. Were they hers? Presumably. Why else would the photo be there? When previously the thing she’d been, there were no offspring, and her role was defined. Here was ambiguity at best. After her name a legend read: Clerk to the Mezzanine, signifying nothing.
She sat down, neolimbs and mechanics creaking. No one paid her any attention, even in her smudgesoiled clothes. Thus the day went.
Vera, where’s that report. Vera, will you type this up. Vera, are you in this meeting. Vera, can you cover the lines. Vera, can you work late this evening, this week, this weekend… None of the requests had questioning intonaics. It wasn’t so far removed from the colony, but for the undersimmering of angreaic repression she could feel formicing inside. When she got up to take her break she half-expected to see a puddle of acid pooling in the pleather.
Lunch was another thing altogether. Still adjusting to her limbs, Vera had to navigate the hierarchy of an eating space whose rules and delineations were unspoken-yet-intuitive. Unpossessed of the lessons, she staggered from table to table, first sitting with a group of directors, then with the typing pool, then with a group of visiting executives, ending up finally in the preparation area with the kitchen crew, who at least didn’t give her the stink-eye. Eating wet slop slab, Vera experienced a sensation not previously felt and for which she knew no name. It was hard to articulate. The closest she could approach was an absence of presence, as if there was some unpierceable membrane around her. She gave it a name of her own: einisolash.
As she sat at the table, surrounded and alone, a tiny creature (a bugglebear?) ran across the floor, limbs chitterskittering. It skimmed the tiles and dabbled in the grout before stopping at Vera’s foot. She looked at it and felt that in some way, if not in reality, it looked at her. Was she known to it? Was it known to she? Dead seconds elapsed, during which time Vera observed with dispassionate interest that her foot was rising in order to come down. She wavered and her sole hovered a shadow over the bugglebear, which, sensing a reprieve, scurried to the crumbcorners of the kitchen. Vera felt stomachsick and diseased. The kitchen crew harried her away, her illish paloured skin a hazard to good health.
After lunch, Debbie visited and made small talk: deadlines, holidays, redundancy. Vera smiled and nodded, understanding that this was all that was required. As Debbie left, Vera longed to reach out, to grab her armish protrusion, to allow their ganglers to connect, but another understanding occurred: that this was unacceptable, not protocol, ne pas de rigeur. What was acceptable, she feelered, was quietude, headdownedness and work. Elements of these were familiar enough for her to exist in small comfort, until the end of the day, which was, she furtherfeelered, when the slowbodies rose and swarmed toward the elevators.
Vera waited until the lights went out. In the dark, with the creepers, nostalgia bloomed. The internal antennae she was becoming unwillingly accustomed to oriented her home, not to nestal comforts, but to a brickshack, the thought of which caused her pain. After navigating an underground labyrinth that was not unpleasant, she surfaced in a landscape of plastibeige. A muted, orderly world—again, not so bad—but in which she felt strange and unwelcome.
All things were new. Forever unchanged.
Outside the brickshack she peered through a window. Inside was the meatpink creature, paler and without the photograph’s idiot grin. He was shouting at one of the awful-looking bugs (understandable) who had committed some unseen infraction. The other half of the pair was playing with a doll. Although, on closer inspection, Vera saw that it was actually another bug bred from the same cloth. Also hers? Why then, was it not in the photograph? Probably too disgusting to be documented.
Vera thought, decided, and fled…
…back through the labyrinth, to the greyscale and greenscapes, now shorn of sunlight and draped in crespuculence. But where now home? This patch of grass, for example: was this it? A scent trail she picked up tapered off at a pile of dead leaves. She kicked them aside but found only rotting wood and fox scat. Vera gagged. Not so long ago, tramping bodily through a whole trail of such shit wouldn’t have bothered her, but that memory was dissipating at a rate that was dizzying as it was terrifying. She ran deep into the trees, in a manner that occurred to her as being hither and thither. The knowledge of this phrase, her impossible recall of these words, along with their madcap random implication, brought up a bile that she spat onto the ground. It hissenfizzled and she did not recognise it. But the fell tree upon the zigguratish logs up ahead? Yes. The dribbling brook, formerly a great impassable river? For certain. Here was knowness. Creature-comfort.
Vera furrowed hard, unearthing old instincts, until she found her colony. But—aye! o! aye!—she’d outgrown the nest. The chaos of the morning lay in crumbles.
Her homehomehomehomehome. The construction of a new fortification had commenced. Already it looked in good health. She loomed over and peered inside. The colony was at rest. Vera desired to be too. She lay on the ground, her head at the entrance. Down and below the colony reverbed, alert to attack. The first line gathered. Another followed. They ran over Vera, not recognising her as their own—even as she squeamed and swatted and called to them by name (a meaningless series of noises) begging to be readmitted to the soil—biting, stinging and formicing the aggressor, who—in the final stages of metamorphosis—rolled over, crushing former-friends and ex-of-kin, and—in a desperate attempt to quell what she knew would be a relentless defence of their territory—drew back her meaty lumberarm and smushed it into the nest, again and again, drawing soil, hemolymph and plasmic carapace, before laying down and rolling away, certain intrepidous individuals hanging on, skewering her, chowing down with mandibles sharp until she gave in, until she surrendered, until such time as she was no longer a threat. Like a pest in need of extermination. A verminous thing. Like a bug. 
