This was her legacy now and what people would remember her for.
She pressed her palms into her eyes hard enough to see stars.
'I want to die.'
But if she was dead, why was she thinking? And why did her body feel solid and real and annoyingly alive?
Mila slowly lowered her hands from her face.
For the first time since waking, she actually looked at the room. Really looked.
It was stunning.
The cream walls caught the morning light and glowed warm gold. Heavy drapes in deep burgundy framed the tall windows, pulled back to reveal what looked like manicured gardens stretching out.
It was nothing like the cracked parking lot and dying hedge outside her apartment complex.
The furniture was all dark wood and elegant curves. A vanity sat against one wall, its surface covered in delicate glass bottles. Even the rug beneath the bed looked like it cost more than every possession she had ever owned combined.
Mila wondered if this was heaven, but she immediately banished the thought.
It didn't make sense.
She wasn't religious, and she was pretty sure heaven didn't accept people who had died mid-orgasm on a livestream watched by over a million people. That had to be an automatic disqualification. One that would likely have her sent straight to the other place, no questions asked, with Gerald's brand name stamped on the rejection form.
'Though I doubt hell is decorated this nicely,' she thought.
Mila sat up slowly. The silk sheets pooled around her waist.
She was wearing a nightgown.
She had not been wearing a nightgown when she died.
And her hands looked different too.
Mila's breath caught.
She looked down at herself. The body beneath the nightgown was not her body. The proportions were wrong. The curves were different. Everything was wrong in a way that made her brain stutter and skip like a scratched disc.
"What," she whispered, her voice shaking, "the hell?"
Her eyes locked onto the full length mirror facing the bed from across the room.
The woman in the mirror was a stranger.
She had the same panicked expression Mila was wearing, the same wide eyes and parted lips, but everything else was wrong. Her hair fell in golden waves past her shoulders, not the dark black hair Mila had spent years learning to manage with an arsenal of conditioners and prayers.
Her face was different. She was gorgeous.
"What the hell?" Mila breathed.
The woman in the mirror mouthed the same words.
Mila raised her hand. The stranger raised hers.
Mila touched her face, the stranger's face, and felt soft, unfamiliar skin beneath her fingertips.
Panic exploded in her chest. She threw off the sheets and stumbled out of the bed, legs tangling in the nightgown that was too long for this body that wasn't hers. The floor was cold against her bare feet as she rushed to the mirror, hands reaching out to touch the glass.
The stranger reached back.
Her golden brown eyes were the only familiar thing. Everything else was completely, horrifyingly different.
And then she noticed the ears.
Two small, pointed ears sat at the top of the stranger's head, nestled in the golden waves of hair like they belonged there. They were covered in fine, soft fur and they twitched!
The ears flicked slightly backward as Mila's panic spiked.
Mila's hand flew up to the top of her head.
She felt them. Soft, warm, undeniably real ears that were not human ears, positioned where no human ears had any business being.
She touched one. It flicked under her finger.
"WHAT THE —"
She grabbed both of them, tugging gently, expecting them to come off like some kind of costume accessory. They did not come off. They were attached to her skull and it hurt when she pulled extra hard.
"What—why—how do I have—are these—"
She looked back at the mirror. The ears flattened against her head in distress, which she had not told them to do, which meant they were moving based on her emotions, which was a level of body horror she was not equipped to process at this hour.
"This is insane," she muttered, running her hands down the silk nightgown that clung to full curves. Her fingers brushed past her hip and she froze when she noticed something was moving behind her. She twisted to look over her shoulder at the mirror.
There was a long, golden tail swaying gently behind her and it was attached to the base of her spine.
Mila stared at it.
It swayed again. Slowly and almost curiously like it was also trying to figure out what was happening.
Feeling numb, Maya simply stood there and stared at her own tail, accepting that she had reached the limit of how many impossible things she could react to in one morning.
"I'm dead and crazy, or I'm—"
DING!
The sound cut through the air and she jerked backward, her heart hammering, as a screen appeared in front of her.
[Degenerate Host has awakened]
'Degenerate?!'
"What the—?!"
Mila stumbled backward and fell hard on her backside, landing on her tail.
Horror crashed over Mila in a cold wave at the sharp pain it caused her.
[This system has seen Host's browser history.]
[(·•᷄_•᷅ )]
[This system is not surprised by Host's manner of death.]