If my hideousness had not been bad enough before, it was now multiplied a hundred-fold. Minutes ago, I may have been able to stand a mirror with some scowling chagrin, but now my visage nearly burned my eyes. I had to look at it sideways and gradually shift my eyes forward to adjust to it, not wanting the truth so blatantly. But the mirror did not lie, and what I had become was undeniable—it was read in my fangs, my wild eyes and my chicken hair. I had become a monster.

I broke the mirror and screamed. The scream would not stop, no matter how I willed it—it was as if my soul was releasing all the tension and frustration I had felt towards my looks throughout the years.

I ran—ran far away from the place of my atrocious creation--ran with the swiftness of an athletic sprinter, my calves and thighs now ready for excessive activity. Yet I hate them for that, hated them for being so despicable and horrible. I ripped at my arms as I ran, loathing that withered skin more than ever now. Mostly, though, I tore at my face as if a beast, trying to rip off this counterfeit of a countenance. What the mirror showed me wasn't me—it was a sham. Perhaps this was all a surreal dream, and I sought, by willing my eyes wide, to abort it. I could not.

My house was far, when I had been weaker, but now the journey took me about the same time it did on the Moltenore. It was a harder walk, as my feet sunk deep into the clouds, as if threatening to release me to the hostile planet below—a place repugnant and fitting for a creature of my gruesome figure. Still I forged forth, as a swamp monster through his blasphemous lagoon, green and appearing only vaguely sentient.

I burst through the door, barely clothed. The scraps they had given me as clothing now no longer fit and had also been torn as I ran—my package, proportional to my sinister frame, dangled out beneath it. I didn't have a key, but merely my hands and arms proved strong enough to burst through the frail and cheap stature of my door, old and worm worn.

The door flew open so hard, one of the latches popped off and it dangled from the bottom hinge. I ignored it and stomped forward, my paces making booming noises on the kitchen floor. Everything in that house was normal but me—it should have calmed me to see such an accustomed setting. Instead, it enraged me. The fact that I did not fit into its dimensions the same way I had infuriated me. I lifted dishes from the drying wrack and threw them across the floor, bellowing with a bestial tone. I stomped on them furiously, barely feeling the shards digging into my ogreish feet.

That's when Meep appeared. He entered casually, as if nothing was happening, took a draught from his water bowl, and then sat on his hind feet to look at me sternly. The stupid beast had unwisely been taught to be afraid of nothing in his short lifetime, as he seemed to always be able to control me with those saucer-plate eyes. In my current state, hypnosis was no longer an option for his defense. Something in the chemical had made me immune to it, and I reached down and grasped Meep with one hand, holding him so hard his eyes nearly popped.

"Don't try that bullshit on me," I growled, tensing my hold. "I'm Doctor Frank-fucking-Sloth, you little piece of shit. And no stupid pet is going to hypnotize me!"

I put the other hand on top of the one that held Meep, my grip centered around his chubby neck. I was filled with an unexplainable rage—something that couldn't be satiated through normal means of relief. I needed blood on my hands; I needed to be quenched through an extinguished life. The voice was booming in my head, becoming a real voice that echoed off the walls—it encouraged my destructive behavior, whispering the decadently devious consequences in my ear.

I cracked Meep's neck with a deft twist of my hands. It was like cracking pretzels—so easy, so delicate. The body fell limp in my hands, and the dark, wide eyes filled quickly with emptiness. A finally puff of air came out of Meep's body, as if in defiance of death, and then the body became fully still.

I had no time to think of my actions before the pain came. Though it sewed shut the lips of that horrible voice, it convulsed throughout me unexplainably. I dropped Meep without a second thought and curled over in agony, grasping my stomach. It wasn't just my gut that was aching, though—that was just the center of my anguish. My whole body seemed to be burning, as if my heart were a volcano, pumping lava through my veins.

The pain found its favorite spot on my wings, which had not yet diminished by aid of the chemical. Now, they deteriorated. I strained my neck to try and watch their demise—the crumpled from my back like a paper with a flame stuck to it, growing old and brown and then seeming to be made of ash before disassembling themselves and disappearing completely.

I crumpled at the knees as if a divine hand had folded me, and then fell to my side. The intensity of the pain was so throbbing that I could barely breathe, let alone scream. It was like electrocution—all the muscles in my body seized at once, conspiring to crush my insides. I could barely manage a final breath before my brain too seemed to turn against me, and shut off all senses, including consciousness. It gave me a last fragmented thought in ponder on in the form of a fading face: a fading, gorgeous face, with flowing dark hair, tan skin, and entrancing eyes.

When I woke up, I was on a lab table. I only distinguished it by the feel—my eyes were limited to looking at the cheap lights above, blinding me in turn with the white, sterilized ceiling.I wondered if Hell was something like being experimented on constantly, tied up and unable to control the gross mutations various chemicals made your body contort to.

Yet much to my annoyance, I had survived yet another encounter with death—surprising, too, as I would have suspected the Royal Faerie Police to inspect my house for any signs and upon seeing my body, arrest me and throw me in a dungeon or worse. Somehow, I had managed to dodge the bullet yet again—unless this lab table proved a worse fate.

"He's awake."

A voice trembled through the air, filled with the cracked nature of tears. The voice was unnervingly familiar, but with the restructuring of my ears I could not quite place where I had heard it. My nerves seemed to be scorched, but a majority of the blistering, stabbing pain had faded away and I was left with only a dull ache that seemed to originate in my bones. When I turned my head, though, a searing pain shot down my spine, and I thought better than to turn it again. Instead, I ventured speaking.

"Who's there?"

Instead of answering me, the speaker stepped forward, leaning over the table for me to see. My heart managed to twist itself in complicated yoga positions at the sight of that face—the face I had seen moments before only black consumed my vision—Hoshi.

I reeled away from her, suddenly unconcerned with the spikes of pain movement caused me. My hands automatically covered my face to spare her of my mutated features, fearing I would scare her away. I spoke, muffled, through my stubby, reduced fingers, not daring to catch a glance of Hoshi.

"Get out of here!" I demanded. "Now!" Now that my mind had settled, I notice that I spoke an octave lower, the transformation apparently effecting my vocal chords.

Hoshi persisted. From her footsteps and the hand on my shoulder (now covered with a flimsy lab coat, as was the rest of my body, besides a pair of slacks that didn't quite fit), I knew she had come closer. Her hand trembled on my shoulder—whether with fear or sadness was undetermined. "Frank." She spoke softly, and her voice seemed to gargle with tears. "Whoever you are, answer me. Are you Frank?"

"Go away!" I replied, unwilling to answer truthfully or tell a lie.

"Whoever you are"—here Hoshi swallowed—"I found you in Dr. Frank Sloth's house just before the Royal Faerie Police got there. And let me tell you, they were royally pissed that they couldn't find you—and that I teleported you in the first place."

"You what?" I was unable to contain my astonishment at this remark, and rolled over to face Hoshi fully, lifting my hands from my face. There she stood, her face badly bruised as if beaten, with the addition of tears rushing down her face, mingling with a few specks of blood. She was unarmed, and though her clothes were ripped from a seeming brawl, and her hair stuck in all directions, she was just as radiant as she had been the day I met her. She forced a smile at me turning over, not even grimacing at my twisted face.

"I knew it was you."

"You were the one who teleported me? I figured it was just some random pitying person from the crowd."

"Nope." She smiled genuinely. "That cold feeling was me touching you with my blade … though sorry if I got a bit of blood on you. I meant to knock the sai out of Valeane's hand, but I ended up taking … a little bit too much off." She gave an embarrassed look sideways.

"You cut off someone's hand!"

"Hey, she was a bitch anyway!" defended Hoshi with a toss of her hands. "If some sore loser thinks she's gonna kill my boyfriend, she has another thing coming!" My heart swelled at her mention of me being her significant other, but I managed to suppress my boyish smile (which would probably be a more grisly smile on my current face).

"So what'd they do with your position as the Battle Faerie?"

"Well, first they healed Valeane … and then they fired me and replaced me with her." She beamed suddenly. "I'm not allowed within a fifty meter radius of Faerie Castle anymore."

"And you're … proud of this? I thought you wanted that Battle Faerie position more than anything."

"You're an idiot." She bent down towards me, a slight smile on her face. "Nothing gets between me and my man."

"That's news to me, after weeks of alienation." I pulled away from her, managing to sit up. "And please don't touch me. I wouldn't touch me. I don't want you to catch my disease of disgusting."

"It's not a disease." A voice came from the other side of me, and I looked over. Hoshi didn't seem caught off guard. Sitting serenely on the other side of the table was my director, the very same who had issued me a relief phone call. She was dressed in a lab coat that perfectly fitted her, and her dark purple hair was pulled back into a sloppy bun. Her eyes looked a little bit fatigued, but other than that she still pulsed her royal aura. "You injected yourself with the chemicals." She gestured towards the table behind her, which still held the test tubes and the empty hypodermic needle. "Rather irresponsible for a doctor, I'd say, but our policy is the best sentient subject is yourself."

"Dr. Quilla!" I shouted in shock. "Why are you here too?"

"Well, Hoshiya over here was smart enough to identify you as yourself despite the obvious … change in appearance. Of course, I knew the Royal Faerie Police would search here as soon as they were done with your house, so we stored you briefly in the freezers while they searched. Don't worry, though, we got you out before any permanent damage could be done," she assured me when an eyebrow involuntarily rose on my face. "Hoshi stayed with you all night right here, while I took some blood samples to see if the damage is reversible."

"Is it?"

"How do I say this? No." Dr. Quilla, being a scientist, was not very good with subtleties. "I must say, though, I can't imagine what inspired you to inject yourself with them in the first place. Especially after seeing those Feepits …"

"Suicide." I wasn't very good with subtleties either. I was also trying to cut her off to prevent Hoshi from joining the conversation with her concerns for the Feepit with yellow eyes. However, this didn't seem to bode very well with either of them—Dr. Quilla's face shifted to a sad and stern one, while Hoshi grabbed my arm tightly. She forcibly turned me around to her.

"What?"

"Suicide," I repeated, slightly irritated. It was bad enough to admit to it vocally in the first place—it was a thing of utter humiliation, no matter how much sympathy others expressed. Suicide was a personal business that was best kept under one authority. "How about we don't talk about that, ok? How about we talk about how utter screwed I am now? Where am I going to go?"

"Frank!" shouted Hoshi, seeming about to slap me. "We can deal with that later. For now--!"

"Actually, Frank is correct," interrupted Dr. Quilla. "We have very limited time to figure out what is to become of Frank. The Royal Faerie Police will likely do a second sweep, after fully breaking down and analyzing everything in Frank's house. The second time, they'll probably tear the lab apart … and probably shut us down."

"What! No!" I pulled away from Hoshi's arm in my aggravation towards her comment. "They can't shut this place down! I'd rather be captured than have them close our only institute for science!"

"Be reasonable, Frank. Rationality is part of your career, not impulsive subjectivity," Dr. Quilla said calmly. She acted as if her livelihood wasn't in serious jeopardy of disappearing due to me. "Science in Faerieland is becoming more unpopular by the years, especially after the results of our last experiment were published. It's inevitable that the Institute will be closed. And I'd rather it go out in a burst then slowly die from suffocated funding."

"Won't our credibility be smashed?"

"We needn't worry about losing that." Dr. Quilla smiled with sad amusement. "We never had any in the first place. Faeries distrust science by nature."

"Then what's your plan, anyway?"

"Simple, though feel privileged when I tell you. It involves unveiling a good deal of secret projects to you." Her eyes glimmered enigmatically, and for a moment I wondered why I wasn't infatuated with Dr. Quilla, but with Hoshi. Just a glance back at my space goddess gave me the answer.

"Obviously, we cannot ship you to the planet below—it's inhospitable, and so far we haven't been able to find a material that can resist it for the long run, despite sending many probes down there. However, from our highly refined telescopes, we've managed to spot a planet that we have confirmed will support life—and possibly does already."

"Wait, wait, wait. And whoa. Why were none of us informed about it?"

"Some were. But we didn't want to spread a pandemonium among the public, though I doubt they would believe us. Our space program has always been under wraps, anyway—only veterans to the Institute, and just a small circle of those besides, are allowed to tamper in such advanced areas. But the progress we have made through this select group have been phenomenal. Which is what leads me to your route of escape.

"We've been building a rocket in the past few years, and about a year ago we finished the final touches. We've been updating it ever since, but through our calculations, it should be fully functional—unfortunately, it's a one man operation, and we only have so much supplies, so whoever went in it'd have to go alone. What I'm suggesting is that you pilot it to that planet—or put it on auto pilot with the coordinates, which is a feature we just added—and establish a base there. We will be able to stay in contact with you through radio, but the conversation will be delayed by five minutes between sending and retrieval when you land on the planet, a procedure the rocket can perform itself.

"The rocket has a machine that can make food out of small carbon blocks that only works when the rocket is in flight—but that will supply you with food while traveling to the planet, which takes around three years. We can supply you with all necessary provisions for building shelter and feeding yourself for up to a year on the planet. But from what we've seen of the planet, it should have plants which are edible.

"Of course, this is a huge risk—though we have overwhelming evidence that the planet supports life, we cannot physically confirm it, as the probes we have sent there are still en route back. There are a whole slew of problems that could go wrong with the rocket, all included in this manual to flying and operating the rocket." She gestured to the table in front of her, patting a thick volume.

"That's encouraging," I said dryly.

"However, if you do make it to the planet, you will be a pioneer for the faerie species," added Dr. Quilla, as if this were some sort of consolation.

I considered the options, weighing them carefully. "Do I really have any other choice besides capture?"

"You could probably hide somewhere, but I think it'd be rather hard to hide with your … appearance. Unless you wanted to become known as a town ghoul." Sometimes I wished Dr. Quilla was less upfront about things.

I decided to make my decision quickly and impulsively, knowing that we would be there all day if I decided to write out a pro and con list, as I would agonize over the details, trying to squeeze out each item for every column. "Then I'm game. Let's do it. Lead me to the rocket, Dr. Quilla, I'm ready to go." I said this with a mock gung-ho attitude, swinging my arms.

"Frank!" Hoshi pulled back on me, turning my head back to her manually. "Frank, consider this seriously. I could probably hide you somewhere. I don't know where right now, but I could probably find somebody." It was obvious by the look in her eyes that a sort of desperation had overcome her. I wasn't sure what had changed this sudden urge to keep me in Faerieland—even in our relationship she had been markedly distant. While I had indulged myself when we fucked fully, she had seemed to stick to the ceiling spiritually, watching as her body committed sinful, lusty acts. Only when she came did she ever express any enjoyment in the process—at those times she would smother her face in my hair (or my blankets, depending how we were fucking) and shake, only speaking once her orgasm passed.

I turned to Dr. Quilla. "Could we get some alone time, maybe?"

Dr. Quilla shrugged and obliged, turning for the exit. "Make it quick, kids." She was almost out the door when she threw us an extra comment: "Clean up after yourselves."

I stared at her back blankly as she walked out the door, surprised at the unabashed crudeness of the comment. Hoshi regained my attention once more, this time by grabbing my crotch. I yelped slightly, and turned back to her, giving her an insulted look. She grinned at me deviously, putting her hands on either side of my hips. "My, how you've grown, Frank."

"You honestly don't think I'm repulsive?"

"With a dick like that? How could I?" teased Hoshi, tickling me under the chin.

"Jeez, you weren't this responsive when I was normal," I chided, half joking, half serious.

"I gave you all I could at the moment, Frank," she explained, nestling her head on one of my thighs. "I was so distant when I was on coke—what I gave you was the fraction of my self that I had left. And with my job … hell, that was all the emotion I could muster after a full day of work. And we fucked whenever you wanted to, right?"

"Fucking isn't an expression of love."

"It was for me."

"Well, thank you then."

"What about an 'I love you'?"

"Hey, I gave you plenty of those!"

"You gave me one."

"Yeah, and you didn't reciprocate!"

"It was early in the relationship! I thought it was kind of freaky! You were lucky I even stayed after that."

"Hey, we had just fucked! You said fucking was an expression of love. Therefore …"

"Oh, don't get all scientist on me," she scolded playfully. "With your mind over matter … your logic and reason …"

"Too bad, honey, that's what you bargained for when you got me," I murmured through a smile.

"So where is it? Where's my 'I love you?'"

"Good things come to those who wait." I bent over and kissed her then, wondering if that was permissible in my present form. I suspected she was all talk about not being bothered about my appearance, but by the way she responded, she was genuine. It was as if no time had ever passed from our first kiss to now—there was just as much passion and intimacy in each brush of the lips, each exchange of the tongue, each sneak-peek at our eyes. I had to bend over to allow her to drape her arms around my neck, and my inflated hands awkwardly clutched at her shoulders, adjusting to my new body.

We pulled away slightly, and I gave her the words she coveted. "I love you."

"I love you more," she challenged, sticking out her tongue.

"No way."

"Yes way."

"We'll arm wrestle for it."

"No fair!" She hit me on the forehead lightly, to indicate disapproval yet that of an infatuated individual. We were both enjoying the moment for what it was worth, playing around as we used to do. Glowing in the living nostalgia, we tried to pretend that we both had not dramatically changed from that one wedding—that her hair was still long and she still sniffed coke and I still looked normal and still worked at the lab. The present still lined the edges of our conversation, making the repartee nothing short of bittersweet. Finally, after a few more light-hearted exchanges, we were had to come back to current events, no longer able to skip carelessly through the past.

"Frank, can I ask you something?" The way she was suddenly devoted to studying my flimsy clothing made me suspect something was up.

"Shoot," I replied, my tone becoming softer.

"Next to you when I went in your house … well, Meep was on the floor, and he was dead." Her eyes made a long journey from my chest up to my face, a scared look on her own. "What … what happened to him?"

I looked into her eyes, trying to find an acceptable way to explain to her about the voice—about the mutation, about the unfathomable rage. But how to communicate something so within the self? It was so deeply rooted in personal experience as to defy language, so I gave her what could be physically discerned. "I killed him." She gripped my knees tensely, her eyes widening in disbelief.

"Frank, you didn't—"

"No, I did," I said, silencing her with a finger to my lips. "I killed that Feepit that you played with, too, but only to spare its life. It got injected with the same chemical I was … but it didn't survive. That's why… I used that chemical to try to commit suicide."

"Why not—oh, never mind." She buried her face into my thigh, throwing her hands over her head. "Frank, I don't know. I don't know what's happening to you, I don't know what's happening to me … God, I wish it could just be that wedding again, when I was totally high and just dancing … dancing because it felt good and it was the only thing in the world that was just … right. And then you came … you came like it was destined, at the peak of my high … like a fucking god …"

"You were the goddess that night, Hoshi," I said, running my fingers through her hair. "That was the night I found out I'd love you."

"You can be a cornball sometimes, Frank," Hoshi said. I could feel her smile across my thigh.

"What can I say, scientists weren't born to be romantics." We had too little time to be hung up over the details of deaths of Pets. Our time together was numbered, and we could both feel the strain between our relationship already, filled with the vastness of space. She lifted her head and we kissed again, and I slowly eased myself down from the lab table. She picked up on the indication, and our kissing progressed into something more. Used to the softness and maneuverability of a bed, as well as myself in a slimmer body, our twisting of bodies was a bit clumsy, but we managed to compensate quickly. It wasn't the best fuck we've ever had together, but for the equipment and environment we had, we made the best of it and threw away all inhibitions. Our hearts were inflated with the helium of love in its last minutes, pushing our backs to the ceiling to float their in the moment of orgasm. Mysteriously, we came together that one time—that was one of the miraculous events that happened that time, both of us gripping to each other's shoulders in shared ecstasy.

Tears directly succeeded that moment. Not from me—I had sworn, in a typical male fashion, to control my blubbering to be strong for Hoshi. Something about the way the tears fell down her face, though, gave me the impression that my damming of emotions was no more noble and courageous than her outright expression of them. In fact, the purported valor I exhibited seemed almost far weaker than Hoshi's sobbing, her tears directed into my chest. She seemed to transfer her grief to me directly to my heart this way, and soon the mental gates I built to prevent any tears corroded. My eyes watered as I held Hoshi to my chest, feeling her breath against my skin.

"Frank … I don't want you to leave. I've got nothing here anymore, nothing but you. What'll I be when I gone? What can I be? A stupid fucking coke head again, who mooches off her friends? Yeah, that really got me somewhere. I was lucky to even get that job with Fyora! God, Frank, what'll I do? What'll I be?" This only added to Hoshi's grief—as of current, she was apparently unemployed, and this was an unnecessary stressor. I held her cheeks in my hands and lifted her face towards mine, wiping away her tears with my thumbs.

"You'll be the Space Faerie, Hoshi. That's all you've got to be."

Her weeping continued, but she no longer ranted aimlessly about the listless nature of her future. Instead, she rested her head sideways on my chest and lay there, closing her eyes. "Your heart beat's so slow now."

"Yeah, in comparison to yours. Yours was always like a fucking butterfly."

"Must be the drugs," she mumbled between lips stifling a smile, but that was quickly washed away by the heartache that hung heavy in the air, depriving us of oxygen to lift our bodies joyfully and spend our last moments in sunlight.

"Remember those times on the roof, Hoshi?"

"Of course I do. How we'd get smashed and wax philosophical, and try to write our thoughts down, but in the morning they were rubbish."

"Morning always makes everything so cold and real."

"You're going to be among those stars, Frank. I'm going to have to look at the sky and search for you. What if I can't find you?"

"Don't worry. If you ever need me again, look to the sky at night. Somewhere among that collection of stars—even if you can't see me--I'll be there, with all of our memories." She gave a soft sob into my chest, but nothing more. She was too tired to cry further—all of the tears in her glands had been wept, and now she could only wallow in our collective misery.

We breathed the air of slow separation across light years and exhaled its stagnancy to inhale it again several breaths later, lying together for what felt like the last time. We stayed like that for a long time, Hoshi sprawled out with only her top on across me and my arms straddling her back defensively, until a knocking came at the door. Reluctantly, I helped Hoshi back into her pants and helped her to her feet. She was lighter than clouds in those moments—her bones full of air and my arms made for weight lifting. I opened the door for Dr. Quilla, who had been standing a few feet back, inspecting her nails.