Athena opened her apartment door to see Tanya standing in the breezeway with a hand behind her back. She didn't look well. Perhaps it was the lighting, but the way her eyes were sunken looked almost cadaverous. She looked paler than usual, and … was that smell coming from her?
"Uh, Tanya?" Athena said.
Her lifelong friend smiled. Normally, seeing someone she cared about smile brought Athena a tremendous amount of joy, but this smile wasn't normal. There was something off about it, something in it that Athena didn't like, something that unsettled her, made her take a step back. Her gaze flitted to Tanya's hidden hand. Her imagination conjured all manner of nightmare scenarios. The hand could be holding a knife or a gun. Never mind Athena had no idea why her friend would want to hurt her. That smile combined with the hidden hand gave her the notion that anything could happen, none of it good.
"Tanya," Athena said again. "What are you doing? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," Tanya said, pulling her hand from behind her back. Athena gasped at the sight. "In fact, I've never been better."
Tanya's index and middle fingers were fused together, making one thicker finger. Her pinky and ring fingers were likewise joined. These new digits were elongated, as was Tanya's thumb. The skin had also changed. Everything from the middle of her forearm to the now-clawed tips of her fingers had turned a pale orange and taken on a rubbery texture.
This was not Athena's best friend. This wasn't the girl she'd grown up with, the one who used to paint her nails that hideous old-lady purple when they were in middle school. The girl who had been there the first time Athena had gotten drunk, who used to scream while she sledded head-first down snowy slopes, who obsessed over weird paranormal shit, and who almost always had a smile for her friend despite what might be going on at home. This wasn't the young woman who'd unabashedly posted bad poetry online as a teenager and now dared put her face in a series of widely viewed videos.
This was a monster. Athena's best friend was not a monster.
And yet, this monster looked like Tanya. Changed though she was, Athena recognized her. Her jawline and eyes were the same. The hair matched too, though it was messier than she normally wore it. Aside from how the hand had changed, it just looked like her friend was nursing a wicked hangover. The hand, though, was impossible to ignore. It looked almost like a prop or part of a costume. Almost. Athena knew better, though. This hand was part of this monster, her friend.
The Tanya thing stepped forward. Athena stepped back.
"What are you doing?" The words tumbled out of her, nearly spoken all at once in a jumbled ball of fearful nonsense.
Tanya bent her elbow to lift the hand. She held it up between them the way someone might hold up a toy from a prize box. She flexed the new fingers. They made a wet cracking sound that made Athena's guts clench.
"What do you think?" Tanya asked. Athena could only shake her head. "Don't like it? Pity." She lowered her hand and looked down as if genuinely disappointed. "I thought you'd accept me no matter who I'd become."
"You're not Tanya," Athena said, barely above a whisper.
"I never was. I was only playing a part until I was recast."
The Tanya thing lunged for Athena.
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The worst part about attacking her best friend: Tanya knew what she was doing; she just couldn't stop herself. It was as if that substance, which first caused her hand to itch, then caused it to change, had taken hold of her body completely. It had even commandeered part of her mind, all but the part that inwardly screamed at her to stop. It had left her powerless and painfully aware of that powerlessness. She took Athena by the throat with the mutated hand.
Athena tried to swallow, tried to breathe. Her eyes widened, bulged, pleaded. She kicked at Tanya's shins. Tanya hardly felt it. She scratched at Tanya's arm. The attacks felt distant and feeble, despite their obvious ferocity. Something numbing coursed through Tanya's veins. It made her not only impervious to pain but also remorseless to her friend's terror.
Though not as terrible as her awareness and inability to stop herself, the lingering itch was no picnic. It was bone-deep under her transformed skin, and it was spreading. She wanted to scream, but this coopting infection wouldn't even allow her that.
Athena threw all her weight forward. It got her just close enough to rake Tanya's eyes. The subsequent pain was just enough to make Tanya loosen her grip. Her eyes must be her last vulnerable place. Though the idea of blindness terrified her, she tried to will Athena to scrape her eyes again. She'd endure anything to prevent herself from crushing her best friend's larynx, even go blind.
Athena slashed at Tanya's face some more, landing some strikes, completely missing others. Despite her onslaught, Tanya would not let her go, and she was running out of air.
Tanya lurched forward, backing Athena further into the apartment. With a swift kick, she closed the door behind them. At this new development, Athena doubled her efforts to escape. She thrashed and kicked, twisted her body, and tried to throw Tanya off balance.
The women stumbled deeper into the apartment. The backs of Athena's legs struck the coffee table, and she fell. Tanya fell atop her friend, but the force of the fall broke her grip. They lay there for a beat, a tangle of limbs and pounding blood. The fall and the substance fogging her brain disoriented Tanya as Athena gasped for air. The first breath came in ragged and labored. On the second, it sounded like she got a lungful. She opened her mouth again, this time to scream. Tanya clamped the mutated hand over Athena's mouth, and the foul appendage muffled the cry. Athena tried for another desperate rake of the face. Tanya shut her eyes in time to protect them.
The entity controlling Tanya was finished playing games. Still holding Athena by the lower half of her face, it reared back and then slammed the back of Athena's head into the table. Her limbs flopped. She didn't stop fighting, but her exertions grew fainter, not that they were terribly effective in the first place. The clawed hand moved back to her throat.
Please, don't, Tanya screamed from somewhere deep inside herself.
Her inner cries weren't unheard, simply unheeded. The mutant hand—her hand—squeezed and would continue to squeeze until something gave and crushed Athena's throat like an empty beer can.
The door to Athena's apartment banged open. Tanya dismounted and let go. Athena rolled off the table and fell to her hands and knees on the floor, sucking in huge breaths and sobbing between them. Tanya faced the doorway. Vanessa stood there, holding what looked like a crossbow.
Vanessa! Tanya attempted to cry out, but her true voice remained buried somewhere in the blackness of her corrupted mind.
"You," the thing commanding her lips said.
"Goddamn right," Vanessa said, sounding so much like an action hero, it would've been funny in different circumstances. Now, it made Tanya want to explode with relief, and she might have, had her body still belonged to her.
All her relief sapped away when Vanessa pointed the crossbow in her direction.
What are you doing?
"What are you doing?" the controlling entity said, echoing her sentiments for the first time since taking over.
"Sorry, HazyGurl," Vanessa said, and fired.
The pain was instant and exquisite.