graphic gore ★ genderfluid

“No, no, no!” Vale muttered, teeth chattering, eyes bleeding mucus. Ve yawned vis mouth as wide as it would go, popped! the joint from its socket, and tore the jawbone right out.

The mirror shattered from the flung jawbone.

A glass shard lodged in Vale’s right eye, but the amorphous gore didn’t notice. Vis grey tongue lolled out of the mangled maw as the skin peeled away from the cartilage of vis nose and ears. Vis pelt sloughed right off the muscle.

Vale headbutted the mirror’s remains, remaining eye flung wide at the reflection. Ve pawed at vis throat until the claws unsheathed and scratched down to the vertebrae. Ve scratched, scratched, and scratched until the claws dislodged from vis paws and stuck in the wounds.

Yet the skeleton beneath the rot reformed. The canid skull elongated into elk’s, sprouting antlers like weeds starved for sunlight.

“What species was I even born as?!” The antlers grew into the mirror; Vale tossed vis head and shattered the rest into the wall. “Why do I remember a thousand deaths but not my mother’s face?”

A strangled scream ripped from vis throat. “Why am I still alive?”

Six wings exploded from Vale’s fleshy back like spiders from an egg sack. Glossy black feathers drifted down and stuck to the putrid sludge slicking Vale’s exposed muscles. “This is not my body.”

Smoke curled from Vale’s empty eye socket. The single intact eye blazed crimson, darting around, seeing but not comprehending. This place. This was not vis home. This was not where ve was supposed to be. But where was ve supposed to be? Vis own society hated those like ver!

Vale panted as the antlers broke apart and smattered the stone floor. Vis paw poked at vis exposed skull, regrowing claws and elongating the toes into fingers. “This is not my face,” ve whispered, exhaling smoke. “But what is it supposed to look like?”

Ve exhaled, and vis front legs frothed at the shoulders. Then they tore away like self-destructing starfish limbs.

Rearing on vis hind legs, Vale shrieked. The six wings unfurled upon vis back, and in one synchronized pulse pulled the rotting creature into the air.

The winged elk tore through the pyramid, slamming against a wall—crack! went a bone—without care. Every time a wing crumpled, shattered, against a collision, it broke away and Vale regrew another in its place. Ve left a trail of black sludge, broken feathers, and rotting wings from vis room to the exit.

Like Icarus before ver, ve climbed higher into the sky, disappearing into the baleful eye of the sun.

// vale is not permanently gone but will return shortly