Simon turned the key in the ignition and the MG’s engine purred for a second before resting. He sat for a moment, headlights off, and stared out into the mist, letting his eyes accustom to the dark. He knew from many previous visits that the hillside in front of him dropped off, a steep, grassy slope to the shore of the tarn below. He wished he could see the shadows of Helvellyn and the Langdale Pikes brooding to the north, but the mist wrapped him in a grey shroud only a hundred yards across.

He climbed out of the car and breathed deep the chilly, damp air, musty from the surrounding forests. Without bothering to lock the door, he started down towards the tarn, car keys stuffed into his trouser pocket, hands pulled up into the warm cuffs of his donkey jacket. He soon found the footpath which snaked down towards massive conifers – great towering sentinels, gazing down silent and inscrutable as he descended.

Simon had spent countless nights here, hiding from his own loathed but never denied mediocrity. Here, he came the closest he ever could to forgiving himself his abject failure to impress anyone despite a lifelong desperation to show “them” all he was anything but the non-event they thought him. The tarn accepted him for who he was, would always be here for him whether he ever made something admirable of himself or not. The sound of water lapping on the rocky banks and the cold, wet mist on his face, never failed to wash away his worries. It never asked more of him than he felt able to provide, or

Often, some nocturnal beast would stir in the undergrowth, and his heart would pound as his imagination filled the darkness with all kinds of horrors. But always the swaying, creaking trees, and the moonlight flickering through their topmost branches would calm him, like some ancient woodland spell. No monster could live in so beautiful and timeless a place.

At the water’s edge, the ground levelled out and the trees thinned. He headed straight for his favourite spot. Where the bank had eroded, an ancient Scots Pine had fallen, and roots which once spread wide along the rocky bank, now fanned out like the back of some ancient faerie throne. He stretched his arms to pull back his sleeves, placed his hands affectionately on the glistening bark and sprang up onto the log. He straddled the trunk, sat back against the roots, stuffed his hands back in his pockets, and hunched down into the warm interior of his jacket. His feet dangled, one above the turf and rocks, the other above the black water. Once, he’d brought a girl here, and told her stories about thick, slimy tentacles rising from the water, dragging him away and devouring him as he clawed at the mud. Back home, he never saw her again. Throughout too many self-sabotaged relationships the tarn had been a constant, and he loved it dearly.

He often came to the tarn to de-stress. Here, thoughts of his own inadequacy, or of Debbie’s recent bitter—but not unexpected—departure, or of his persistent and growing business debts, seemed remote and trivial. Here, he could step right up to the edge of the massive black depths, gaze deep into them, then turn and walk away. Here, he was in control. Here he could spend an entire night without a second’s sleep, only to drive away in the morning, at the same time relaxed and revitalised.

A faint glow lit the scene as the moon and stars appeared in the inky sky, and he noticed the mist had thinned. A light rain began to fall. He gazed, mesmerised, as the droplets formed perfect, soundless, rings exploding across the surface of the water, scattering the moonlight into dancing silver shards. He smiled as he recalled how it had rained like this the night Debbie was here. She had listened, wide-eyed, to his horror stories, then reached down and splashed her hand in the water and called the monsters to come and say hello, not to be so shy. He’d really hoped she might be the one, but as usual, he knew himself best, knew how little he deserved the prospect of commitment. They had parted after only a year, her hurting far more than he, and that he would never forget.

His dreamy gaze refocused as an odd observation surfaced, almost apologetic, in his reverie.

The surface of the water was being disturbed by more pronounced ripples, from somewhere behind him. He froze, and heard a muffled sound from behind the fan of roots at his back. A click, like plastic on stone, then some large, wet, mass settling heavy and hard on the ground. Then the eerie sounds stopped again, replaced by a silence somehow even more menacing.

An odour drifted across him, like wet cattle, but sour too, and rotten. The awful stench worried at something primal inside him, and he started to shake. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, slowed his breathing.

Suddenly the water erupted. A nightmarish limb, leathery but rough like tree bark, shot out and wrapped around his right ankle. A double row of tiny teeth bit deep into his flesh, and Simon screamed, spit flying, all rational thought swamped by sheer, uncomprehending terror. He felt hot venom gush deep into the wounds. Another limb lashed his left leg on the other side of the trunk. He tried to yank the leg away but the motion made the teeth slice deeper, scraping flesh from bone. His calf muscles shredded, and both legs died as he felt the venom burn up towards his hips. His arms, too, were yanked down under the tree trunk, his hands clutching desperately at the air. Both shoulders dislocated, then the thing lacerated his wrists, and thick red drops rained down onto the water.

Now the unseen beast yanked down on his legs. One hip dislocated, and Simon bit through his tongue as the skin on his hip stretched and tore. Barely conscious now, he felt the burning ache of the venom spread up through his guts. After the searing heat followed a merciful numbness, detaching his terrified mind from the vandalism of his flesh.

Then it showed itself.

It shambled round to his side, glistening, the rotten stench now unbearable. Twice man sized, it was a towering, putrid, mound; oily and slick, and steaming in the cold night air. Dozens of leathery bulges ringed it’s middle, each heavy with some unseen fluid. Above each hung a thick fleshy tube, the ends ringed with more tiny, vicious, teeth. It looked like some giant, bloated plant and yet it seemed to study him with unseen eyes.

The thing stretched upwards and leaned over him, and Simon began to sob. His bowels emptied. One side of the thing now flowed up and over his legs, and the beast straddled him, crushed his back into the tree trunk.

Simon tried to close his eyes but couldn’t. He watched one of the leathery sacs shift as the tuber under it stiffened and extended. It grew to over a foot long, lined with thick blue veins. As it stiffened, the ring of teeth fanned outward and started to pulsate, as if hungry.

Simon had fallen into terrified despair, praying only for a swift end, grateful that he at least felt no more pain. But now, he snapped back to reality, brutally aware of what was coming.

The thing fell heavily onto him, the tube thrusting and chewing and punching up into his ribcage. Like some mindless rapist, it hammered deep into him, and his entire body thrashed and bucked in an orgasm of desecration as he felt another scalding explosion of venom fill him.

The thing went limp, settled over him, forced the wind from his lungs and crushed his ribs, and then, finally, pathetic, and terrified, and defiled, Simon died. His last thought was to wonder who would miss him.

*******

Seconds before Simon’s brain suffocated, alien fluids flooded his brain and his heart and dragged his dying organs back from death.

Throughout his broken body, the juices boiled and burned, dismantling his immune system, warping his organs out of all recognition. Flesh dissolved and reformed, bones melted and re-knit themselves, muscles were ripped apart and refastened.

Even unconscious, Simon’s mind witnessed every second of his continuing desecration. He felt his body bucking and writhing, his bones and organs warping and dissolving, and yet he felt no pain, only a sense of appalled but calm fascination. He dreamed he lay in a vast, black, void. He heard distant voices, muffled, as if heard under water, and he thought he heard them call his name. When he tried to move towards them, he floundered on twisted and shrivelled limbs, crawling through mud, heavy and cloying, sticking like tar. It dragged him down, crept like a living thing down his throat and up his nose, and smothered him.

When consciousness crept upon him, some unknown time later, he panicked and gulped for air. He found his mouth and throat full of thick jelly, felt it down inside both lungs. He gagged, and lashed out, thinking he was drowning in the waters of the tarn, but he was too battered and weak to displace the thick, cloying jelly. Then, with a shock, he realised he could breathe, and horrified fascination took the edge off his panic.

From deep in his insides, he felt movement. The venom still dulled the pain, but he felt organs shifting, bone grating against bone. A sudden, violent jerk on his spine yanked the vertebrae in his neck down between his shoulder blades. He felt the bones separate, and he tumbled into oblivion again.

*******

Simon awoke again. He had no idea how much later. His body felt bruised and battered, and every move now brought blinding, searing pains from his innards, like shards of glass slicing through him. He wished the numbness would return.

Through the haze of the jelly around him, he thought he could see blue sky through swaying tree branches. Farther away, he could make out the blurred forms of clouds and hilltops. He guessed he was suspended high above the tarn, probably in the branches of one of the evergreens he was more used to seeing from the bank.

He wasn’t dead. He might survive this, yet.

He reached out his hand, and recoiled as it rose into sight. It had been transformed, stretched to an impossible length, but muscular and powerful, his flesh formed into leathery flaps. His fingers were gone, a single talon in their place. The  stabbing pains eased as he flexed it, and he dared to hope that the worst was over. He reached out and felt resistance. He guessed he was encased in a sac of the gel which seemed to be keeping him alive.

Out of sheer desperation, Simon’s struggling mind took a first tentative step towards rationalising and mastering his horrific and surreal ordeal. He wasn’t prey. He wasn’t fodder for some alien’s hungry offspring. He was a child returned to the womb, an unwilling changeling. A part of him feared his new form might be hideous, but his new arms looked powerful and healthy and pulsating with vitality. A perverse fascination took over, and he explored his developing new form. Such profound changes could only be irreversible, so he decided to embrace his fate, rather than struggle in vain, and so found refuge in madness.

With this acceptance came a blissful calm, a new sense of purpose. He wondered whether coincidence had brought him to the beast or whether fate had engineered the meeting. Waves of delirium crashed through his fevered mind. From the wreckage of Simon’s dead human form something fabulous was growing. He was on a journey he suspected was offered to only precious few, and he had survived the first difficult steps. This torture was a test, and he had passed it. He had looked beyond the desecration of his flesh to the wonder of his remaking.

His futile, aimless, life now made sense. He had never formed a lasting relationship because he’d known he’d check out of the human race one day. He’d learned to enjoy his own company because he would one day need the strength to survive this ordeal alone. His entire life, he now realised, had been empty and joyless. Until now.

He examined himself again, not in fear now, but in awe. A life of wonder awaited him, scarcely imagined by the average ignorant human. He understood, now, their small minds, and the fear buried deep in their genes, painfully alone in so vast a universe, powerless against their own mortality. But he had survived what no other had and he was becoming something new and fantastic. Most people could only dream of such a transformation, as they trudged through their dreary little lives. But not Simon. He was, at last, unique.

Or was he ?

He wondered if others had made this journey. Would they welcome him as one of their own, recognise in him the same agonies of their own re-births? For the first time in his life he felt hope, the possibility of utopia, a life apart from human animal’s self-inflicted neuroses and miseries. Soon he would shed this cocoon and embrace his new life, a life he could never have imagined before he’d been chosen.

He studied his new form again. The gel made a detailed analysis difficult, but he could see that the leathery flaps had meshed together, and with a thrill, he realised they had formed what he could only call wings. His heart thumped as he imagined soaring above the tarn, swooping from dizzying heights to glide noiselessly across the water’s surface, and sailing effortlessly over hillsides and forests.

Although eager to leave the sac, Simon allowed sleep to take him again, but now he dreamed of flight, and blue skies, and the waiting arms of those who had gone before him.

*******

When he woke, he saw pre-dawn half-light through the gel. He shifted slightly, and lurched. He froze, fearful of the drop below him. He glanced upwards and his heart leapt as he saw a tear in the sac. The moment of his re-birth had come. He reached through the gel and felt chilly morning air on what used to be his fingers. He drew the talon down and the skin parted. He stopped half way down, left enough of the sac intact to support him, and rested, his arms – wings, he reminded himself – wrapped tight around him against the cold air.

He gagged as his lungs voided themselves of the fluid and the cold air felt wonderful as he drew it deep into him. Then he blinked his eyes clear and gazed around.

Below him stretched the tarn as he had never dreamed he’d see it. The sac hung from the branches of a Scots Pine which had leaned far out over the water, pushed from vertical by the gale-force winds that often hammered at the tarn. The vista arrayed around him was a feast, and he hungered for it. He had survived the destruction of his old self, had embraced his remaking, and now the gates to a whole new world stood wide open, his to enter.

He noticed his ruined clothes still hung on him, far too large for his slim new frame. He shrugged them off and they fell into the bottom of the sac – he wouldn’t be needing them anymore.

He recoiled at his first clear look at his new self, but then marvelled at the fantastic changes. He was lean and sculpted with thick, powerful, muscles. His vision seemed sharper and clearer than before. Incredible vitality coursed through him, like a constant adrenalin rush, almost too intense to bear.

Gently, he opened his wings. They spanned at least eight feet, massive and graceful. He imagined the eyes of his predecessors, watching his first glorious unfolding, eager to welcome him into his new family.

He stood, swayed in the now-near-empty cocoon, and embraced the sky. He allowed himself to fall forward and downward, and took flight.

The wind filled his wings, the membranes tight and full. Tears poured down his cheeks as thirty-four years of misery and loneliness disappeared in a single, explosive, release.

Then his dream died.

With his first powerful down stroke, the tissue along his wings shredded and ripped away from the bone, and he fell.

A howl of rage echoed over the hills as Simon plummeted toward the waters below. He tumbled over and over, away from the skies and towards the tarn. He hit the ice-cold water, and the agony of his torn muscles was forgotten as he plunged below the surface.

The cold shocked him back into focus. If he could reach the shore he could rest and recover. He flailed at the daylight fading above him; after all he’d gone through, he refused to surrender his gift.

But he sank, his shredded limbs now useless, flaps of his tattered wings a perverse parody as they flapped in the water, until he settled in the silt.

He started to crawl. He aimed for where he guessed the shore was, even as the water pressed at his mouth, and ears and nose.

He found a corpse, half buried in the mud, long dead and rotted. It, too, lay with would-be wings stretched out. Long, matted, dark hair waved in the water, and a pair of sunglasses hung on a cord around its neck.  Around them lay others, a mass of dark shapes littering the gloomy lakebed. Some lay curled up, foetal. Some had crawled towards the shore, none managing more than a few feet, and he realised all his fury and determination wouldn’t save him any more than it saved them.

With his last few seconds, Simon prayed to any God who would listen. He prayed he’d be forgiven his arrogance, his foolish dream of escaping his given lot.

He opened his mouth and breathed in the eagerly waiting waters of his beloved tarn. He wondered if there was still a heaven for people like him. Him and all these other poor wretches.

He’d like that.