Stay Hydrated

It wasn’t the first time Dalia had ever had the horrible feeling of falling wake her up from sleeping. It wasn’t even the first time she woke up because she actually was falling out of bed.

Waking up, in bed, after having fallen out of bed though? Feeling both the bruising thud of impacting the floor, at the same time as she still knew very distinctly that she was still warm, cozy, and cuddled up with another body in bed, under the blankets? That was a very jarring first.

Dalia’s eyes burst open, but seeing very little in the dark room, she disentangled herself and sat up… and sat up… and sat up. She could feel herself stir sinuously, the covers of her bed twisting around her tail, and that was right… but it shouldn’t be. When she looked about the room, she gazed about with three pairs of eyes, situated in three faces, saw her own silhouettes in the dim light, two on the bed and one above the floor…

Some voiceless part of her soul knew this was fine, but that comfort and assurance directly conflicted with the echoes of a human lifetime of having only a single torso, a single head, and two clumsy legs. Both of which conflicted with the dream she’d been having where she had been an omelette waging war on a buffet table battlefield -which both memories and instinct confirmed was distinctly wrong and very definitely a dream.

The chill air raised goosebumps on two of Dalia’s three torsos. Cold, she pulled her two naked torsos back under the covers of the bed, literally slithering back underneath, because each human torso was connected below the waist to a serpentine length that joined at a larger snake’s body. Her serpentine body, which was much too lengthy for the shockingly tiny bed, which was spilled out over the floor in chaotic coils.

Memories burnt away the fog. She had gone to bed as a human. Dalia quickly patted herself down with six hands. Humans didn't have six hands. Humans didn't have three torsos. Humans didn't have a massive snake tail.

All three of Dalia’s torsos suddenly dove for the lamp on the bedside table. There was too much ‘Dalia’, however, and the one woman crowd hit the lamp all at once. There was a brief moment of light as her touch turned on the lamp as it was knocked from the bedside table to the floor with a cringe-inducing crash of glass. 

A three-throated, single woman harmony cried out, “Shit!”

The lamp, its decorative glass shade broken but some of the bulbs within intact, still managed to illuminate the room. Dalia, all three bodies hovering over the bed stand in mortification, now found before her many eyes that she was indeed three times the woman she had been when she went to bed… a hydra. A very confused hydra, but a hydra nonetheless.

“Dalia? What was that?”

“I’m…” Dalia caught herself once again speaking from all three mouths at once, and realized that might come off as very unusual… wait who was that anyways? Her coworker Anne? Dalia barely managed to stifle groans. She was on a corporate getaway. Sharing a cabin with two coworkers.

“I’m fine,” Dalia called out, “just… turned on the lamp a little too hard.”

“You’re paying for it!”

In concert, Dalia felt each face frown, offended at the idea that Anne would imply she wouldn’t take responsibility, “Of course!”

Yet even as she called that out, a second throat and voice box muttered, “As if!”

A third muttered, “Bitch.”

Dalia realized what she had said, and in a panic the two muttering bodies dove at each other,  twisting around the third center body to cover two of Dalia’s mouths, resulting in an awkward tangle of Dalia’s own arms and torsos.

Anne didn’t reply, and the tangled mass of Dalia hovered awkwardly for long moments. Dalia found herself blinking in confusion a moment before proceeding to untangle herself, and slowly retreated back to her bed. Her tail coiled up into a massive pile atop the mattress so she could huddle into a comfortable, but nervous, hydra pile to reorient herself.

Which was hard, as so much of what was going on didn’t make sense. People didn’t just wake up as monsters… did they? Dalia frowned. Well, she wouldn’t consider herself a monster… which was weird in itself, because shouldn’t she feel more horrified to suddenly wake up as something not human?

Dalia looked herself over quickly, an easy feat with three sets of eyes. From the waist… waists… up, she was exactly the woman she remembered. Each torso was identical to the way she was before she went to sleep: A lean, sharp featured woman with dark hair and just dark enough skin to hint at some non white blood mixed into her ancestry.

What was odder though was that the new changes to her body didn’t just seem normal to her, but they somehow seemed more… fitting. Dalia had seen her body, frowned at and disapproved of this or that for years in a constant existence of feeling not quite right, but not being able to put a finger on why. Except now that feeling was gone, as if the newer ‘her’ was the form her heart had been longing to see in the mirror all her life.

Dalia felt… whole. Complete. Finished. Her gaze swept up her long powerful tail, lingering on the curves around her waists, the firm roundness of her behind, the shape and swell of her chests, and an excited tingle began to tease the sensitive parts of her body in arousal. With an almost disbelieving awe, Dalia realized she felt incredibly sexy.

“This must be some sort of spell…” Dalia’s central body breathed heavily, even as one adjacent self bit her lip excitedly, and the opposite began to lick her lips with a long, forked, shiny black tongue.

A very long tongue. Dalia felt her heartbeat quicken, as wild and carnal ideas manifested within her imagination, complete with delightfully teasing questions about the function and potential ‘entertainment’ to be had from her extra anatomy.

Which is when the front door to the cabin opened up, followed by heavy bootsteps, and a loud slamming door. Which managed to jar Dalia from the horny musings threatening to overwhelm her mind.

“Dalia! Anne! You will not believe what just happened!” 

Dalia found herself very willing to believe, and hesitantly she slithered towards the door. Carefully maneuvering herself so that only one body could be seen, she nervously cracked open her door. She was not, however, the first one to answer.

“Clint, you asshole, people are trying to sleep!” Anne screeched.

“But Gina! She turned into a bull dude thingy! Like, a dude, dude?” Clint exclaimed.

“Wait… what?” Dalia tried to ask, but was drowned out by Anne angrily shouting, “Damnit Clint, there wasn’t supposed to be any drugs allowed on this trip!”

Anne found herself frowning in triplicate.

“I’m not on fucking drugs Anne,” Clint shouted back, “Gina really turned into a… a minotaur!”

“Bullshit!”

Dalia warred mentally with the idea of just… leaving her room to prove Anne wrong, but showing off the changes she herself had undergone seemed like a risky prospect. Not that Clint or Anne would be a threat, as it didn’t take much imagination for Dalia to guess why she’d be more than a match for a normal human… though picturing herself wrestling someone to the ground was a compelling thing to imagine…

It took a moment for Dalia to shake that train of thought. Worse still, several hands had wandered places as the fantasy played out, and Dalia began to suspect that whatever species she was, she had a serious issue with impulse control. 

Hoping that it would somehow help tame her libido, Dalia went to her suitcase to dress her other two torsos, hoping that being… well, not naked, might put her in a better frame of mind. Except, while shirts and bras were simple enough, pants and panties were a no go. Sighing, she just wrapped her bedding around herself instead, at least holding her blankets on occupied her wandering hands.

Luckily, Dalia’s wardrobe difficulties didn’t take longer than Anne and Clint’s debate, which had devolved into an argument about each other’s relative professionalism.

Dalia sighed. As the low woman on the corporate totem pole, she had ended up in the cabin with the office busybody and the office ‘yahoo party’ dude. 

“... as an excuse to get the office slut all liquored up…” Anne was ranting.

“Well that’s probably your problem now Anne, cause now Gina’s hung like a horse, and the only cunt big enough for her here is…”

“Clint! Just… chill, ok?” Dalia shouted, loud enough to interrupt, “just… what is Gina doing now? Is she attacking anyone?”

“Surely you don’t believe this?” Anne said, managing to work impressive levels of ‘condescending’ into the statement.

Clint practically jumped to give his rebuttal, but Dalia just managed to beat him to it, “Yes. We could probably go out and see for ourselves, but I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth.”

“Oh? And why is that?” 

With a sigh, Dalia slithered out of her room, carefully maneuvering each body out of the door as she did. Clint, standing in the main floor, but still able to spot Dalia because of the story and a half building style of the cabin, simply froze, slack jawed, upon seeing her.

The dramatic reveal was partially ruined by the fact that apparently Anne had been doing all her shouting from inside her room, door shut. 

A trend she continued, “Well?”

“For… “ Dalia sighed in chorus, “Anne, come out here and see for yourself.”

Anne’s door opened. A viscous semi-transparent, yellow pile of slime shaped like Anne half-stomped, half-splatted indignantly out into the common room, dressed im red silk sleepwear that the slime was oozing through at the seams.

Anne gaped at Dalia, looking shocked and horrified, “Good lord, you’re a freak!”

Clint’s mouth worked open and closed, attempting to find words but failing miserably. 

Dalia fared a little better, “The hell Anne? You changed too? Why were you giving Clint such a hard time about Gina then?”

Anne, even with her new features, managed to look huffy and extremely offended, “What do you mean, changed?”

“You were human yesterday!” Dalia pointed out angrily.

“I was not!” Anne huffed.

“The fuck?” Clint managed to mutter.

“Then why did you buy PJ’s that you seem to literally be dissolving as we speak?” Dalia argued.

Anne glanced down at herself, then sniffed haughtily, “It’s clearly a manufacturer’s defect, I’ll be demanding a refund in the morning.”

“The fuck?” Clint repeated, louder.

“Calm down Clint,” Dalia assured him with her leftmost body, even as the other two stared Anne down angrily, “this is all very weird, but I don’t think anyone who has changed is going to hurt you.”

“That’s clearly something a monster would say!” Anne growled, pointing a single accusing finger.

“Oh my god Anne, you are also a monster!” Dalia groaned.

“I am not!”

“Check your passport! Or your driver’s liscence Anne. You were. A human. Yesterday.”

Clint, apparently overwhelmed, fled out the door. Anne and Dalia both glanced at the entrance to the cabin as it slammed shut, though Dalia was able to keep two pairs of eyes on Anne.

Anne scowled at the door. Then she scowled at Dalia. Then, with a loud “hmmf!” she turned around and marched back inside her own room.

“I’m reporting both of you to human resources!” Anne announced loudly, “this is… this is harassment!”

Dalia goggled at Anne’s door a long moment, faces twisted in confusion.

“Bitch! It’s called human resources. And you’re not even human!”

____

Originally Dalia retreated back to her room in the cabin, mostly because it was where all her stuff was. Which was fine, for thirty seconds until Anne started a loud ranting monologue due to the fact that her phone wasn’t getting reception or internet service.

It was a fate that Dalia unfortunately shared. Dalia desperately craved more info about… whatever was going on, or at the very least she wanted to know if the problem was only affecting her small part of the world. 

So she left her room, and made her way to the cabin stairs. Which was an unexpected problem as stairs were not designed for slithering species at all. She did manage to get down, by an uncomfortable process of wriggling down slowly, backwards on her belly, but the descent did not feel dignified at all. Luckily no one she cared about was there to witness it.

“You look absolutely ridiculous doing that.” Anne commented, but Dalia internally maintained: No one she cared about witnessed her going down the stairs.

“Try not to slip through a crack and end up trapped in the basement, Anne.” Dalia replied with mock sincerity.

The slimy hag made a disapproving noise, and returned yet again to her lair. Possibly to get a new change of clothes, as her body was apparently finished eating through her nightwear.

Dalia supposed Anne’s now literally caustic nature should worry her more, but she didn’t want to admit that Anne was dangerous any more than she wanted to admit she herself was dangerous. Which might also, on some level, mean that everyone else would have to treat Dalia like she was dangerous, and the train of thought from that point was distressing, at best.

A strange idea occurred to her as a means of which to prove to herself she wasn’t, by nature, a threat to people. So she went to the kitchen to eat a sandwich and a salad. After all, if she wasn’t meant to prey upon people, then she wouldn’t get violently ill from eating normal human food.

This, of course, was a surprisingly thought provoking experince of on the nature of her form, her metabolism, and her nature. She wondered about how well her instincts would protect her from doing something that would potentially harm her. Or, how much her fears or desires were supplied by her hydra nature vs just her being Dalia, the personality she had and hopefully always would be.

Both her sandwich and her musings were unsatisfying and inconclusive. Dalia thought about the awkward climb back up the stairs to her room, vs just passing out on the couch, when she noticed a silhouette approaching her cabin from outside. Dalia groaned in chorus, wondering if she shouldn’t have closed the curtains, but even as she thought it, the figure outside turned in her direction.

The mustache gave away the identity of the visitor as easily as a giant neon sign. The director of operations, Gavin Colmes, stuck to a ‘dignified authoritarian’ style normally attributed to butlers or old time british military officers, which was a style Gavin was clearly comfortable with. Upon catching sight of Dalia, sitting on and wrapped around three stools next to the cabin’s counter, he paused for barely a heartbeat, raised one grey eyebrow, and then slowly and carefully tugged at the edge of his carefully groomed imperial style mustache.

Dalia waved a single hand in nervous greeting, and Gavin nodded sharply, as if approving of this gesture before knocking on the door sharply twice.

Dalia got up and slithered on over to the door to let him in, hesitating only slightly at the thought that, as a higher up, Gavin did have some influence over the existence of her job. But, locking a bigwig out of the cabin so Dalia didn’t have to deal with it seemed to be just delaying the inevitable.

What Dalia didn’t anticipate though was how much the chill air pouring in through the open door would affect her. She felt the touch of the chill stormy wind literally clawing away the heat from her body, and sprang away from it like it was poison gas, to bury herself as much as she could under the blankets she still had wrapped around herself, which were lamentably insufficient to fully protect her. 

Gavin entered briskly, in the fast, efficient way some people could without somehow seeming in a hurry, “Evening, Miss Dalia. Sorry to call upon you at such an hour. It would seem some things need… sorting out.”

There was a thump from upstairs, and Anne’s door was thrown open, “Mr. Colmes! What are you doing here?”

The director glanced upstairs, then carefully glanced back downwards to focus on the gloves he was removing, “Miss Anne. If you’d indulge an older man in his old-fashioned mannerisms, I would greatly appreciate it if you could throw something on while I was visiting.”

Even shivering under the aftermath of her chilling experience, Anne’s embarrassed cursing still managed to bring a smile to Dalia’s many lips.

“Sorry for the, uhm, lack of polite greetings, Mr Colmes,” Dalia called out, trying to match the directors’ mannerisms, “I didn’t realize the cold disagreed with me so much.”

“Well, one could hardly expect tonight’s circum…”

“Mr Colmes, I am so glad you’re here!” Anne shouted out as she, yet again, burst from her quarters.

It took a keen eye to note the subtle, stern hardening of Gavin’s features that signified his irritation, but Dalia had extra eyes with which to notice it. Likely Anne did not see the same telltale signs, and clambered down the cabin steps with eager haste, having squeezed herself (possibly literally) into a full business suit in record time.

“I’m so glad to see.you Mr Colmes, and I am so very sorry for my wardrobe… challenges. It seems my choice of sleepwear was very poorly made. It literally just fell apart.” Anne simpered, switching quickly back and forth between a broad friendly smile and a wrathful scowl.

“It’s been a very peculiar evening, Miss Anne. No harm done.”

“Peculiar? Peculiar?” Anne repeated, her voice pitching up as she worked herself back into a state of outage, “Mr. Colmes, you are much too polite. I have one housemate indulging in drugs and alcohol on a weeknight, and the other… just look at her, Mr Colmes? How is that acceptable?”

“I’m sorry what?” Dalia asked in disbelief, rising up from her blanket pile, before noting the director’s carefully expressed thoughtful glance. 

“Miss Anne. Is that to imply that you think Miss Dalia spontaneously transmogrified into a Greek, mythological being on purpose?” Gavin asked, his carefully controlled tones a perfect mix of sarcasm and disdain that even Anne seemed to detect.

But Anne was not the type to re-examine a thought she could simply double down upon, “Well, what else could have happened? People don’t just… turn into things, sir!”

Gavin didn’t immediately reply, and began to remove his coat while casting a questioning glance Dalia’s way.

“She thinks she was always a slime, sir,” Dalia explained. 

Anne folder her arms across her chest in a huff, “This… prank has gone one quite long enough! Mr Colmes, this… this thing is trying to gaslight me! She even replaced my ids!”

Gavin spared Anne precisely one glance, and focused his attention on Dalia, “And you, Miss? Do you remember what you were yesterday?”

“Human, until I woke up earlier,” Dalia confirmed.

Gavin nodded sharply.

Anne gaped, “Mr. Colmes, sir. You… you remember, don’t you…?”

Gavin sighed deeply, long, and suffering, before glancing at Anne, “We can agree that something is, in fact, going on here, and I’m inclined to believe that you and Miss Dalia are victims of this… mischief. Though the how, and the what, are at this point impossible to discern.”

Anne’s mouth, poised open to deliver more wrath and complaints, paused as the slime took a moment to digest the idea as slowly as she was apparently digesting her wardrobe. Apparently something Gavin said agreed with her, as her brow furrowed slightly, and she started nodding.

“Now, considering the alarming nature of this evenings’ happenings, I’ve taken it upon myself to figure out what needs to be done about this event,” Gavin announced.

Dalia was mildly impressed, “That’s very brave of you sir. I think most people would be more afraid of someone who just suddenly turned into…” 

Dalia gestured vaguely about, leaving the implication that she and Anne were dangerous unsaid.

Gavin gently plucked at his mustache, “I must admit, finding the former Miss Gina tearfully begging her… ahem, their lover to come out of the bathroom and talk gave me the impression that those affected could still be quite reasonable.”

The visual that statement conjured was very thought provoking, “Did… anyone else change?”

Gavin noticeably hesitated, “Two other employees have locked themselves in their room and are refusing to talk to anyone at this point, so perhaps.”

Dalia nodded thoughtfully, “I was afraid of how other people would react, too.”

Gavin turned slightly, unable to meet anyone’s gaze, “Actually, they might have… other reasons to be locked away. They were sharing a room, you see, and seemed possessed less of fear than a… distinct and passionate enthusiasm.”

“Oh.”

“Clint advised me that you two had also… been affected.” Gavin continued carefully, “You’ll pardon me, but you are actually the last of the employees I’ve come to check upon.”