Jason felt… weird.

  At first, he refused to believe it, but the reflection staring back at him from the water wasn’t his own. Instead, the reflection that looked back at him was of a rat-like creature with a thin and sinewy frame, its patchy gray fur clinging uselessly (and almost appearing as if it were about to fall off) to a bony body that looked malnourished as if it hadn't eaten in days, which was punctuated by the homeless-like attire that its body wore to protect itself. It's... uh…., his limbs were too long, with fingers tipped with dull, claw-like nails that resembled a lion's but at the same time looked humanoid. When he stood upright, his back hunched slightly forward, and his posture was a bit awkward but nonetheless bipedal. Two black, glassy eyes stared back at him from the water while his snout twitched with irritation at the sudden frigid cold that swept through the whole forest.

  Jason took a shaky step back from the water’s edge, his limbs working sluggishly to move him as a piece of twig snapped underneath his leg. "Ugh," he groaned. The pads on his feet were surprisingly sensitive, and every twig or rock sent a jolt of discomfort up his legs. He looked down at his hands and flexed his elongated fingers, which resembled those of a human, but still, looking down at his arms, he had to admit that it felt weird.

  "My new body sucks," he muttered, his new voice rasping like a smoker who had munched on gargled gravel and maybe drunk some wine with it, which made his voice sound distorted, warped, and animalistic to the point where it didn't even sound like his anymore, or human for that matter. Clenching his hand into a fist, the razor-sharp claws at the ends of his fingers made a deep cut into his hand, but strangely, he didn't feel any pain.

  Instead, he watched as his purplish blood rapidly enveloped the laceration, sealing the tissue and knitting the wound shut in seconds before slipping seamlessly back into his body.

  He flexed his hand, but still no pain. He didn't even feel any exhaustion.

  "Ugh," he grunted as he stood up, ignoring the uncomfortable sensation in his legs while he walked, trying to find civilization. He didn't really know where he was, to be honest. One moment he was sleeping quietly in his bed, and the next he was surrounded by a swirl of shadows before appearing in the forest as a giant, obviously mutated-looking rat.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Jason limped forward, his awkward gait thudding softly against the forest floor as he transitioned to all fours. The sudden shift in posture relieved some of the strain in his legs and back, and though it felt humiliating, it was much better. His long limbs moved with surprising grace once he stopped trying to walk like a man and started moving like... whatever he was now. And, at the very least, if somebody actually mistook him for a wild animal, he would have looked as imposing as a large prowling wolf, judging from his size.

  The trees were a bit weirdly shaped, and the colors of the bark and the leaves were unlike anything he had ever seen on Earth, but, like most things, he couldn't really say for sure if this was the case since he had never been much of a tourist. For all he knew, he could have been somewhere else in the world due to kidnapping or something else at play since so far, everything he had been experiencing was way too weird to even put into words. It could be a hallucination, but if it was, it was a pretty damn convincing one.

  Jason paused beneath one of the trees, his snout twitching as he sniffed at the air. The scent was clean and carried a faint metallic tang that tingled at the back of his throat, and it was as if the forest had never known pollution or decay, which unsettled him to no end.

  Not because it was bad that the stuff around this place was clean and smelled good, but because of how disturbingly vivid this 'hallucination' was.

  Extra emphasis and quotation marks on “hallucination.”

  Anyway.

  Overthinking things instead of focusing on survival was a bad move for anyone in any type of situation, especially those that revolved around, I don't know... living. So, he decided to ponder the events of what had happened later and, well, focused on figuring out if he could find anyone to help without freaking them out at the same time.

  Walking to one of the nearby trees that towered over some of the others in the area, he grabbed onto one of its thick, low-hanging branches, his clawed fingers digging into the bark with ease, finding a solid grip as he tested the strength of his arms. With an awkward heave, he pulled himself upward, the muscles in his limbs responding instinctively and far stronger than he expected, and in just a few moments, he scrambled up into the tree like he’d done it a hundred times before in his life.

  The sensation was incredible, but he didn't have time to praise his sudden superhuman capabilities. Instead, he crouched low against the branch, scanning the forest canopy.

  He sniffed the air and almost threw up at the disgusting stench that wafted into his nostrils. It was putrid, like spoiled meat that had been stewing in stagnated water, which made him recoil, his lip curling back instinctively in a snarl as he suppressed a gag. His snout twitched violently in protest, and for a moment, he had to hold onto the branch just to steady himself.

  “What the fu—”