A new character enters the ring! This one is original, and may just be the main character in this story.
Joanna woke with a start. Her eyes hurt, and her throat itched abominably. She coughed, trying to assuage the tickle, but to no avail. Her dorm room seemed a little blurred, with different overtones. Hadn't the walls been white concrete when she went to sleep? Everything was hazed over in blues now, with her running laptop glowing redly on the desk. Odd.
She stood up and went to the door, intending to go drink some water, but stopped in shock when her hand reached out for the doorknob. There was a hideous beast right behind her, to have claws like that so close. She froze, and the claw froze as well. Eventually she had to breathe again, and almost collapsed as a fit of coughing and hacking stormed through her. The claw had assumed position right in front of her face, blocking her exhalations just like ...she...would...have... she wriggled her fingers. The claw's digits wagged back at her mockingly. Oh shit. She tried to grasp the doorknob gotta find a mirror gotta look oh god oh god but her claws could no longer curl correctly. Feeling scared and terribly alone, she began to pound on the wooden door, her claws knocking chips from the wood. A mournful cry burst from her lips, an hoarse, alien sound that shocked her and made her redouble her efforts to get out. Eventually, the door gave way and she shambled into the hallway. The lights were flickering on and off, but that didn't seem to prevent the strange blue and red glows from registering-- was she seeing in infrared? Cool. For just a second, she was distracted by the fresh knowledge, and then the triphammer shock of the next question hit: Am I even human?
She tried to run to the bathroom, but her joints weren't flexing as far-- her body felt restrictive, bent somehow into something uncomfortably new. She settled for a sliding sort of step-hop, and stumbled down the corridor to the communal bathroom. As soon as she reached a mirror, she stopped and stared and stared and stared. Oh...
She was hideous. The right side of her face was a mass of bubbled skin, like she'd been horribly burned. The left side of her face seemed quite normal compared to that, with only a slight pallor to the cheek. She coughed again, and felt something shift in the recesses of her throat. Finally. Phlegm sucks. She burst into more hacking and coughing, then something moved? and swelled up, launching itself up her esophagus and out her mouth, shattering the mirror and punching a six-inch hole in the concrete. Even worse, it hurt when it hit.
Is that my tongue? She brought her claws up, careful of the edges, and examined the several feet of muscle protruding from her mouth. Actually, now my throat doesn't hurt. Maybe because it doesn't have a tongue like a bullwhip stuffed in it. She found that she could breathe around the monstrosity lodged in her windpipe, and "stepped out" of her consciousness for a minute. Oh god oh god what am I? What is this, this thing in my mouth and why does it feel good to throw it out like that?! She teetered, but her aching eyes refused to tear. Maybe my tear ducts are shot.
This thought turned her abrupt slide into laughter, but it shortly trailed off. Her stomach rumbled. Huh. Breakfast time, I guess. How do I... let's not even go there yet. She tried to stuff the rest of the tongue back in her throat, but it went slack and slithered limply out. Finally, her throat was clear! She stepped out of the bathroom and finally took stock of the corridor. Several of the doors were broken down from inside like hers had been, and some were broken in from outside. She limped to the edge of one of these doors and peered inside.
Her face drained of what little color it had, and she almost collapsed. That's... that's a lot...of blood. A figure lay curled on the floor, chest gently rising and falling. It had blood on its lips. The room, in fact, was painted with it-- an arm and part of a chest cavity lay on the bed, and the other half had obviously been part of the creature's meal. It looked like a human... "Hey!" she said. It came out scratchy and hoarse, but it sounded like English to her. The sleeping thing snapped to alertness, then clumsily stood up. It wavered there, looking at nothing, then abruptly spun and looked at her. It crouched into an attack stance, yelled something, and charged her, hands curled into fists and mouth open to bite. She jumped back out of the door, and it ran straight out the door and into the wall.
She suppressed a chuckle, which turned into a cough. Damn, that tickle is back. The bloodstained creature howled, and ran at her again. She brought her hands up reflexively to block, and her claws bit deeply into the thing's wrists. It staggered in shock, bleeding profusely, and then flopped down like a marionette whose strings have been severed. I I I I killed it! Oh god, I killed someone? Oh no! I didn't mean to honest I was so scared a low growl caught her attention. She turned, unconsciously dropping her center of gravity-- that deep of a growl meant a fairly big dog. ...But it wasn't a dog, it was a person in a hooded sweatshirt, down on hands and knees, for all the world looking like a wolf poised to spring. She'd had a friend down the hall, Galina, who'd always worn sweatshirts...
"Galina?" she asked, tentatively. The growling stopped momentarily, then resumed. It started winding higher, building to a peak. "Galina, what's wrong?" Joann tried to keep talking, but another coughing fit broke out as her body recognized what her mind refused to. The Hunter leaped, roaring, but Joanna's tongue was already lashing out, whipping around the leaping figure and pulling tight. The roar turned into a yelp of pain and fear, then something went crack and the struggling figure stopped. Once again, the extruded tongue slithered wetly out Joanna's mouth.
I have to get out of here, I have to, I have to go, get out, I have to, was all she thought. She limped away, down the hall and the stairs, taking them as quickly as her unfamiliar body would allow. She was on autopilot, with the smoker's instincts carrying her. She wanted away from that place, anything to get away. Her subconscious knew what her reaction to her stomach's demands would be. She'd looked at the blood, and the torn flesh, and been hungry.