In a Bottle: A Female's Entomological Odyssey

Imagine that you are quietly sitting in your room, reading a story on your computer. Suddenly, a torturing itch begins on your skin, causing you to wriggle uncomfortably. Rubbing it doesn't seem to help, in fact, it seems to be spreading. You notice something odd when you look down at your limbs; they're slimming drastically, their length and muscularity diminishing. You feel a rippling change travel up your spine. Something is emerging from your back. It feels like the wings of a butterfly unfurling, but much more substantial. You twist your head back for a quick peek, noticing a pair of wings, iridescent as they catch the light, twitching of their own accord. Staring at your own hand, your fingers begin shriveling up, growing thin and hard. Your remaining fingers morph into three segments that are oddly reminiscent of a fly's feet. A sharp prickle emits from your mouth, and within an uncannily brief span of time, your tongue transforms into a proboscis, a serious feeling of uncanniness cruises through your body. A peculiar sensation overwhelms the lower portion of your body. Your abdomen begins inflating like a balloon, growing round and segmentated. It’s an unusual sensation, but not altogether unpleasant, feels you are floating into a world of incredible metamorphosis. Next comes the surge in your head. Your eyes grow impossibly large, covering nearly your entire face. Everything turns black, except for brighter specks of light and color in the world around you. You blink and wonder at the strange new perspectives that your multifaceted eyes offer. A different visual spectrum reveals itself to you, the colours you’ve known are replaced with wavelengths you couldn’t comprehend before. The world seems to rush away from you, increasing in scale as you feel yourself shrinking continually. You catch sight of your reflection in a mirror, your image scares you for the time being, as you resemble nothing of your earlier self but a female green bottle fly, a Lucilia sericata. Finally, the most shocking change commences. You feel your memories fading away, replaced by an instinctual knowledge – a need to find food, nourishment, to reproduce. But they struggle, the human memories, clutching onto every last neuron even as they’re rewritten with the life of an insect. The transformation comes to an end, but something of your self-awareness persists, a traveler in an insect's body. The echo of your former human life is all but buried beneath the instincts of your new form, as a Lucilia sericata. You flex your wings against the air, a faint memory of your human existence fading into oblivion as the exciting life of a fly beckons you.