by Tim Collins
The rational part of my brain was horrified by this. I didn’t spend an entire evening colour-coding my revision timetable so I could just ignore it and swan off on a whim. But another part of my mind reasoned that there were still a couple of months until exams, so what harm could it do?
I stepped outside and ran down the street, expecting to get a stitch before the second lamp post. But to my surprise, I found myself running further and further, past the terraced houses, then the semi-detached ones, then the detached ones until I got to the fields to the north of town and eventually to Lunar Wood.
I ran round and round the wood all day, amazed at my stamina. I used to have trouble running for 400 metres, yet now I could sprint all day without flagging. I was so tired when I got home that I curled into a ball and went straight to sleep on my bedroom floor.
Sunday 15TH April
I slept right through until morning after my spontaneous day of exercise. When I woke up my legs were so stiff that it took me ages just to walk to my desk.
I have now redrawn my timetable so that I can catch up with all the revision I planned to do yesterday. It’s going to be tough, but I think I can cram it in.
Here goes.
That didn’t work. I opened my maths textbook and tried to force myself to take it all in, but nothing happened. Then I tried with my science textbook, then my history textbook, then my French textbook. Still nothing.
After a while, I noticed some movement outside my window. There was a squirrel dashing up a tree outside my window. I stared at it as it darted around the trunk. For some reason, I found this utterly gripping. Anyone would think I was watching a Doctor Who season finale rather than a mangy rodent.
What’s happening to me? Am I turning stupid? If so, can’t my brain at least wait until I get my A star grades?
Mum went out for a drink with her friend Caroline tonight, leaving me to cook for myself. There was a lamb chop left in the fridge, so I got out a baking tray and turned the oven on.
But just as I was about to pop it in, I wondered why I needed to cook it at all. Wouldn’t that take all the flavour out of it?
Without really knowing why, I bit off a chunk of the raw meat. To my surprise, it tasted fantastic. Why had I ever wanted to ruin the lovely meat by burning it and serving it with mint sauce when it was perfect in its natural state?
By the time I’d finished, blood from the chop was running down my chin. I should have been ashamed of myself, but the meat was so lovely I didn’t care.
I ran my tongue around my mouth and it felt like all my teeth had thickened and sharpened. But when I looked at them in the hallway mirror they seemed normal enough.
I was just woken up by some foxes rifling through our bins. Before I had time to think, I found myself running outside and growling at them. They darted off down the street, but I didn’t see why I should let them get away with it. I ran after them, and was about to follow them into the back garden of number 42 when I stopped myself. Only a couple of months ago, I moved the debating society to tears with my impassioned anti-fox-hunting speech. Now I was engaging in the very activity I’d condemned. How quickly we betray our principles.
I’m going back to bed now and I’m not going to let the foxes bother me. They can have the litter if they want. I’m rising above it.
Monday 16TH April
My body is determined to find new ways to embarrass me every day. In Science this morning, Mrs Marshall projected a diagram about atomic structure onto the whiteboard. I tried desperately to commit it to memory in case it came up in the exam, but it just wasn’t sinking in.
As I strained and strained to make my brain remember it, something very unpleasant happened. I felt a warm shape forcing itself out at the back of my trousers.
Desperately hoping that no one else would notice me, I ran for the door and made straight for the toilets.
When I got there, I turned my back to the mirror and lifted up my shirt. It was more horrible than I could ever have imagined. At the top of my trousers there was a short, stubby tail wagging back and forth.
I reached around to touch the tail, but it shrank until I was looking at an ordinary human back again.
I returned to class, and faced the inevitable accusations that I’d had to run to the toilets because I’d had an accident in my trousers. The weird thing was, I was happy to let them think that, because the truth was worse.
This has got to stop. I’m a prefect, for pity’s sake. I’m supposed to be setting an example. If other pupils see prefects disrupting lessons, running around corridors and growing tails, what’s to stop them doing the same? I just hope the doctor can give me some pills to make this stop. I can’t take much more.
I stopped by at Tesco on the way home and picked up some steaks that had been reduced to £2.99. I was planning to give them to Mum to cook for supper tonight, but in the end I couldn’t resist wolfing them down raw. I know I’m risking all sorts of weird diseases with this raw meat thing, but it was just too moreish. When I got back Mum offered to heat up some spaghetti hoops, so I told her I’d cook them myself later on.
I didn’t, of course. Why should I bother with boring old tinned pasta when I could be eating delicious raw meat?
Tuesday 17TH April
Time for my appointment now. I’m usually nervous about going to the doctor in case he gives me an injection, but things have gone too far now. He can give me all the injections he likes if it makes my problems stop.
I’m back from the doctor’s now, and he’s put me on a course of antibiotics.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I did justice to the full horror of my situation. I wanted to tell him about my tail, but the memory of it disgusted me so much I couldn’t speak. Then I tried to tell him about my upper body growing and shrinking, but he thought I was describing how it felt rather than what actually happened. Then I tried to tell him about my urge to wee around my desk and he suggested I might have a urinary tract infection, although I didn’t have any of the other symptoms he listed.
In the end I came right out and said I thought I’d contracted rabies from a dog bite, but he wasn’t convinced. He asked me how my general health was and I had to admit that I feel stronger and fitter than ever before.
He gave me an antibiotics prescription to get rid of me, but I haven’t even bothered taking it to the chemists. Whatever’s wrong with me, it’s nothing that quack can help with.
Wednesday 18TH April
Please stop this, body!
Why are you doing this to me?
This morning I washed and conditioned my hair just as I always do.
As soon as I got to the school gates, Tyson and his gang started teasing me for having a mullet. I felt the back of my neck and there did indeed seem to be long hair covering it.
I ran into the toilets and looked at my reflection. For reasons best known to themselves, the hairs just above my neck had grown to shoulder length during my journey to school.
I left the house looking like an efficient prefect, and arrived at school looking like someone from the deep south of America whose mother is also his sister.
I grabbed a strong pair of scissors from the art stockroom and chopped the offensive locks off.
Please, hair, I’m begging you. Don’t grow back. I just want an ordinary day. I need to get my head around simultaneous equations. I don’t want to look like someone who still counts on their fingers.
Thursday 19TH April
The ginger cat from number 23 hissed and arched its back when I walked past this morning. I was rather surprised by this, because I’ve always got on quite well with it, and I’ve even stopped to stroke it once or twice.
I couldn’t work out what I’d done to offend it at first, but then I remembered about the dream where I’d chased it through the forest. Could the cat somehow know about the dream? They are quite spooky, I suppose.
I walked over to the cat so I could show it I meant no harm, but it ran off down the street. But then
I realized I did mean it harm. I wanted to catch it, pick it up with my teeth and shake it violently back and forth. Luckily, I managed to hold myself back from this idiotic behaviour before I got reported to an animal rights charity and became an international hate figure.
I got banned from the chess club this lunchtime. The very club I started over a year ago is now out of bounds to me. And the weird thing is, I don’t even blame them.
I was paired up with Pete for the first game. I usually like to think three or four moves ahead when I’m playing, but today I couldn’t even think of my next move. Every option I thought of seemed like it would lead to humiliating defeat, and the whole game began to annoy me. Why was I stuck in that stuffy classroom moving those little pieces around anyway?
My frustration grew, and without realizing what I was doing, I swiped all the pieces off the board and growled at Pete. When I looked down, I saw my nails had hardened into claws again. Karl and Roderick, who were playing next to us, looked across in disgust.
I tried to apologize but Pete said my behaviour had gone against everything the chess club stood for. It was meant to be a haven from the usual brutish persecution of the gifted. He said I’d betrayed these principles and hit me with a lifetime ban.
I whimpered with shame and left the room.
Friday 20TH April
I saw a bus driving past as I left for school this morning, and decided to catch it so I could do some extra revision on the way in. Unfortunately, I just missed it. But rather than wait for the next one, I somehow thought it would be a good idea to chase the bus into school.
To my surprise, I almost caught up. I was focusing on it so intently I barely noticed how fast I was zooming along myself. It was only when I overtook a cyclist that I realized I must have been running at over twenty miles an hour. He gave me such an astonished look that I forced myself to stop and walk the rest of the way.
How did I get so good at running? When we did the 1500 metres race in PE, Mr Johnston let me stop after the third lap as everyone else had already finished.
By the time I got to the history classroom I was streaming with sweat. The only seat left was on a table with Erica, Julia and Amanda, the most attractive girls in Year Eleven. I usually avoid sitting with them, because they make me so nervous I can’t concentrate, but today I had no choice.
At first I felt very self-conscious about how I smelt after all that running, but then I began to feel strangely proud. I put my hands behind my head, letting the reek from my armpits out.
Erica, Julia and Amanda looked at each other and winced. I should have been ashamed, but I wasn’t. They were the ones who were in the wrong. They were the ones who covered up their natural odour with body mist and roll-on deodorant, while I let mine flood into their snouts.
I lurched violently forward in my chair, slamming my head into the desk. Under the table, my legs had cracked into painful haunches, with every muscle, bone and vein agonizingly stretched. A few seconds later, they shrank back, flinging me back upright.
This sent the class into a fit of shame coughs, so I stared at my textbook, pretending to get on with my work.
The class soon lost interest and returned to their own conversations. I patted my legs under the desk and found they were completely bare. Whatever had happened to them, it had ripped off my school trousers, leaving just my stretchy nylon briefs intact. Thank God I didn’t wear boxer shorts to be cool. I doubt they’d have survived. I picked the fragments of polyester off the floor and arranged them over my thighs into a semblance of trousers.
At the end of the lesson I waited for everyone to leave the room and sneaked out into the corridor, holding my satchel in front of me. I had to think fast. I was tiptoeing down the corridor outside the history room with just my shirt and underpants on. If anyone spotted me, this was going straight onto YouTube. I’d be known as ‘no-trousers boy’ for the rest of my life and I’d never be able to leave the house again.
I heard the door at the end of the corridor creaking open. With nowhere else to go, I dashed into the cleaner’s cupboard.
It’s now 8pm and I’ve just got back home. I waited until I was absolutely sure the caretaker had gone and then I ran down to the PE changing rooms. I grabbed a pair of black shorts from the spare kit box, opened the fire escape doors and ran straight back here.
How can I ever go back to school knowing that my clothes could fly off my body at any time?
Saturday 21ST April
Today I went down to the shopping precinct to buy some baggy clothes. I thought that if I bought the largest shirts and trousers I could find, they might survive any further freaky expanding my body chose to do.
At first I tried the school uniform section of Marks & Spencer, but even the largest sizes looked like they’d rip apart.
In the end, I went to JJB Sports and bought a huge pair of elasticated tracksuit bottoms and a hooded top with roomy sleeves. I could expand to the size of a family car without breaking those.
I know I’ll be flouting school uniform rules for the first time with this new outfit, but if I don’t wear it I could end up naked in class. And that’s not just against school rules, it’s against the law.
Sunday 22ND April
I jumped with fright at the sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning. My eyes had turned bright yellow, and the pupils had elongated into dark vertical slits.
I blinked, and my eyes returned to their usual pale blue. I had no idea if this was just another hallucination, but I couldn’t take any chances. I rooted around in my drawer for my sunglasses and put them on. Luckily, it’s a nice day, so they won’t look too out of place.
Mum just asked what was behind my new image. I said she wouldn’t understand so she teased me about being a moody teenager.
I wanted to tell her all about the funny turns I’ve been having, but all that came out was a grunt.
Then she said I must have bought new clothes to impress a girl and asked me if I had a girlfriend. I ran upstairs to my room, which she took as evidence that she’d guessed right. I don’t know why this made her so pleased. You’d think with her dating history she wouldn’t want to see me set off on that rocky road.
I went into Tesco just before closing time and found they had loads of reduced meat. I got a massive bagful for under a tenner, including pork chops, lamb cutlets and steaks, and I tucked into it on the way home.
Now I’m completely stuffed and I’ve still got some left over for lunch tomorrow. I know I should put it in the fridge, but I somehow feel as if it won’t be fully safe unless I keep it right next to me all night.
Monday 23RD April
I was late for school again this morning because I was distracted by a smell. I was just turning the corner of my street, when I detected an odour and felt compelled to investigate it. I got down on my hands and knees so I could track the scent with greater accuracy.
It ended up leading me to a squirrel that was climbing an oak tree in someone’s garden. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do now I’d tracked it, so I got back on my feet and walked to school.
I don’t know what I expected to find that was so exciting. An invisibility ring? A lightsaber? A sonic screwdriver? At any rate, I need to stop myself from getting misled by silly smells from now on.
We all had to pair up to conduct an experiment in Science this morning. I usually choose Pete, but by the time I got there he was already sitting next to a boy with thick glasses called Roger. The only person left was Amanda, one of the girls who’d caused my trousers to fly off on Friday. I was worried this might happen again, so I avoided speaking to her as she set up the Bunsen burner, tripod and boiling tube. But when she asked about what had happened last week, I thought it would be rude to ignore her. I told her that I’d been ill, but I was feeling much better now.
After that, we started chatting and I found that she was much friendlier when she wasn’t with Erica and Julia. I kept checking my hands and legs for hairs, but nothing see
med to be happening, so I thought I might be okay for once.
After a few minutes, Amanda said I had something on the back of my trousers. I felt around the back of them, and found that my tail had grown back. And this time, rather than a small stump, I’d sprouted a large, bushy tail that went almost down to my knees.
I turned to face Amanda, so she couldn’t see it. But she was determined to find out what it was, and tried to turn me around. I was strong enough to resist her, but unfortunately the physical contact made my tail wag vigorously back and forth behind me.
My tail knocked over the tripod and Bunsen burner and sent the boiling tube crashing to the floor. I stuffed it up the back of my shirt and tried to pick everything up, but it was too late. The class had erupted into a chorus of shame coughs and Mrs Marshall sent me out for disrupting the lesson.
At lunchtime, I went behind the playground bins to enjoy the rest of my meat bag. You might not think the scummy area behind the wheelie bins is an especially nice place to go for lunch, but when you’re addicted to raw meat your standards of mealtime ambience fall sharply.
After that, I took my Ribena carton along to the canteen to keep up a pretence of normality. But by the time I’d got there, Roger had taken my usual place next to Pete, Karl and Roderick.
I didn’t want them to see me sitting on my own, so I went over to Tyson’s gang instead. They weren’t especially welcoming, and asked if I was drinking carrot juice or ginger beer, even though it was clear from the carton that the drink was blackcurrant-flavoured. The irony is that I quite like carrot juice and ginger beer, but I wouldn’t dream of drinking them in school for fear of giving them ammunition.
