The Transformation

‘Who’s the text from?’
‘It’s nothing, just one of the girls.’
‘Let me see.’
‘No, really Simon, it’s nothing.’
The knuckle bone strikes the skull with a force as great as a hammer. Sends her flying, and as she falls, her head catches the edge of the glass table. The table they had chosen together, after much debate, and which she polishes every day. It shatters. Some slivers of glass pierce her left eye, and one slices her left cheek to the bone. She sees a swirling kaleidoscope of colours. She shakes her head, and a jagged bolt of pain zigzags behind her eyes. Her vision is blurred, but dimly she sees a shape, leaning on a large rock. A powerful, threatening figure, with a stag’s head, antlers standing erect and proud. Cold eyes stare at her. The flesh has melted from this creature, whose skeleton flexes and twitches before her eyes. It leans so casually in this ghastly nightmare scene, lord of the blasted trees, and bleak, black land. What is that lurking within that tree? Is it her embryo, which she has tried to guard within its cocoon inside her? Has this creature torn it from her and left it crouching there alone? A deep sense of hopelessness, and despair is creeping over her senses, paralysing her. She knows with certainty that she will not find a path out of this desolate forest.