I came to slowly, as if my brain were waking from something that couldn't be called a dream — because a dream implies the possibility of waking up, and I… I had simply existed in some gray limbo between being and non-being, where time flowed like acid over rust, corroding everything that once seemed real.
The first thing I felt was a smell.
No — not a smell. A stench.
A stench that had soaked into every cell of my body, every molecule of air, every crack in this dead wall which I would later realize wasn't a wall at all, but the arch of a sewer tunnel. The smell of rotting shit, dampness, mold, and something else — something alive, something that had begun to rot while it was still breathing. It was like someone had grabbed my nose and shoved it straight into the asshole of the world, and the world had shit itself in pleasure.
I tried to open my eyes.
That was strange. Not painful — no. Just… unfamiliar. As if I were learning to use a body for the first time. A body that, as it turned out, wasn't mine. Not entirely.
I was looking through some kind of film, through fog, through dirty glass that hadn't been washed since the collapse of the USSR. And when my vision finally cleared, I realized I was in some fucked-up cave — not made of stone, but of brick, soaked in soot, oil, and layers of human abandonment.
The walls were wet, streaked with rivulets of liquid whose color I couldn't identify — rusty water, blood, or maybe just the concentrated essence of all the shit we flush down toilets every day. The ceiling — if you could even call it that — was low, oppressive, like the world itself had decided I didn't deserve proper space and had squeezed me into this pipe like a condom filled with refuse.
I tried to stand up.
And that's when it happened — the first bell, the first alarm in my head that said:
Misha, you're fucked, brother.
Because I realized I didn't have hands.
No — they were there. But they weren't hands.
I looked down, and instead of my familiar, work-worn limbs, I saw… legs. Spider legs. Not sleek, not cinematic, not some Marvel bullshit for kids whose moms won't let them watch real horror.
These were real. Fucking. Hairy. Segmented legs ending in claws that scraped against concrete.
I moved one.
It lifted obediently. I saw the dim light from some distant lamp reflect off the hairs, the chitin, the… this thing.
"What the fuck…?" I whispered.
But instead of my normal voice, something else came out. Something like metal scraping glass, a crow's scream, the sound a pipe makes when someone pisses into it.
I tried again.
"What the fuck is this shit?!"
Louder now. And I felt something vibrate out of my throat — if it could still be called a throat. Something unnatural.
I tried to stand on my legs.
Which also didn't exist.
There were eight of them.
Eight fucking legs.
And I controlled them as easily as if I'd been a spider my whole life — one who worked retail and jerked off to analog horror. I rose onto all eight. Strange, but not hard. My body remembered movements I had never learned. Muscles — if they were muscles — contracted in the right sequence, and I realized I could move.
Fast. Very fast.
But right now, that wasn't what mattered.
I needed to understand what I had become.
That mattered more than where I was.
Because if I'd ended up in some fucked sewer, reborn as a spider — then either I was dead and this was hell, or I'd landed in something worse than shitty reincarnation anime watched only by people who never found real friends.
I moved forward, feeling my legs grip wet stone, vibrations traveling through my new body, feeling… everything.
Everything around me.
Every drop of water. Every crack in the wall. Every living thing crawling through this pipe.
I felt rats hiding in the crevices.
I felt insects drinking the filth.
And I felt… fear.
Not mine.
Theirs.
They were afraid of me.
But my thoughts were elsewhere.
First — appearance.
I found a puddle. No — not a puddle. A whole fucking river flowing down the center of the tunnel, black and stinking, carrying objects I did not want to identify.
I leaned over it.
And I saw myself.
And I swear to God — I shit myself.
Not metaphorically. Not figuratively. I felt something warm leave my new body, and that was the most human moment I'd had so far.
The face — if it could be called a face — was… fuck, how do you even describe this?
It was like someone had taken my old face — Mikhail, twenty-five-year-old Pyaterochka clerk everyone ignored — and shoved it into a meat grinder along with a spider, a clown, and every nightmare I'd ever buried deep in my mind.
One eye.
One huge yellow eye with a vertical slit, like a snake's.
The mouth wasn't a mouth — it was jaws. Full of teeth. Not human teeth. Long, sharp, shark-like teeth pointing in different directions, as if each one had its own opinion about reality.
And the skin.
Glossy. Slimy. A texture I'd only ever seen in the most fucked low-budget horrors — the kind where the director had less money than my salary, but knew how to create atmosphere that made normal people's hair stand on end.
Mine would have too.
If I had hair.
I didn't.
There was chitin.
There was meat.
There was something I didn't want to think about.
"Fuck," I rasped at the reflection. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. Are you serious? Are you fucking serious, Universe? I spent my whole life being a good boy who just wanted to watch a few horror videos and die in his bed — and this is what you turn me into? This evolutionary abortion?"
The reflection stared back.
It didn't blink. It had no eyelids. Nothing human.
But deep in that yellow eye, I saw… myself.
Mikhail.
The same one who sat in his apartment, jerking off to Kot Begemot and dreaming of someone — anyone — noticing he existed.
Turns out, someone did.
The drunk who stabbed me in the throat.
And now I was here, digested into this thing.
Panic rose in me like vomit after cheap vodka. My new body trembled, legs twitching, a sound tearing out of my throat — something between a scream, laughter, and sobbing.
But I stopped.
No — I didn't stop the panic.
I told myself:
Mikhail, you're already dead. You've got nothing to lose. And if you're already in shit — why not be the biggest dick in that shit?
That thought calmed me.
It was stupid, sure. But it worked.
Because it was a thought I'd always had.
Before, I'd been afraid of consequences.
Now I was the consequence.
First — an experiment.
Because if I'd turned into this, maybe I could turn into something else. I didn't know where the idea came from — it was sudden, like it had always been there.
I needed to see if I could become something less… fucked.
Something that didn't look like a piece of trash abandoned by a god-mother and crowned ruler of the sewers.
I closed my eye — or eyes? — and thought about how I wanted to look.
Bon.
Fuck yes. Bon from The Walten Files.
That blue rabbit. Animatronic — or was he? I didn't remember exactly. Didn't matter.
I thought of his long muzzle. His black eye sockets. His jaw opening too wide. His voice — mechanical and human at once.
And I felt it.
Change.
No pain. Just… wrongness.
Like every bone, every muscle, every chunk of meat that was now me decided it was done being what it was and began rearranging.
I watched my legs compress, merge, turn black and glossy like plastic. My body stretched, became boxy, like a toy package. Holes appeared on my face — not eyes, holes. Black voids filled with nothing.
I leaned over the puddle again.
And saw the new me.
Yeah.
I was Bon.
Not a perfect copy — memory failed me on the details — but the important things were there. The blue, scratched muzzle, like someone had tried to fight it off. The black eyes staring into emptiness. The jaw opening when I spoke — no teeth inside.
Wires.
Light.
And something else.
Something pulsing like a heart I no longer had.
"Wow," I said.
My voice sounded like his. Mechanical. Torn. Full of static.
"Wow, fuck. It works. I can be anything. Anyone. I can be my own nightmare."
Then the thought hit.
What if I could only be what was scary?
What if my power wasn't freedom — but a limit?
What if I could only become things that made others piss themselves?
I closed my eyes and imagined a beautiful fairy. One from anime I watched when I was young and stupid. Transparent wings. Glowing hair. A face so beautiful it made you want to cry.
Nothing happened.
I stayed Bon.
Then I thought of another fairy.
One from a swamp. Bat wings. A face scratched by children's claws as they tried to fight her off.
And I felt the shift.
Plastic limbs thinning. Dirty wings bursting from my back. My muzzle sharpening. Fangs growing — long as a disobedient child's fingers after a beating.
And…
I became a fairy.
A scary fairy.
The kind children fear, not love. The kind that doesn't give gifts — it takes them.
"So," I said to my reflection, now something straight out of old fairy tales written not to comfort children but to teach them the world is shit. "So, Mikhail. You can only be what's terrifying. That's your power now."
I laughed.
The sound echoed through the sewer. Rats fled. They understood a new predator had arrived.
That predator was me.
But first — exploration.
I didn't know where I was. How this place worked. Whether there was a way out.
And I felt hunger.
A hunger I instinctively knew how to satisfy.
Turning, I launched forward into the depths of the tunnel.
And another idea formed in my mind — how to truly understand what I was capable of.