B3515/16 - Skunk-Spider

I hustled back to the locker room. After returning the clothes I'd borrowed, I found a dark corner in which to morph. As soon as I'd finished, I came scurrying back out. I was feeling strange, like maybe I was still not done morphing, but that was only jitters. I ran for the wall and started to climb.

With my furry black paws.

My what?

"Oh my God!" someone screamed. "What is that thing?"

(...)

No! Not again!

"It's like . . . oh, oh! It's like a miniature eight-legged skunk!" someone screamed.

"It's a mutant freak!"

"Kill it!"

"You kill it! I'm not going anywhere near that thing!"

I bolted underneath one of the refrigerators, my eight tiny paws scrabbling on the tile floor. Two sets of gigantic feet rushed toward me. I backed up against the wall.

Half-spider, half-skunk. Eight legs, all of them tiny skunk legs, with skunk paws and skunk claws. A third the size of a regular skunk, maybe four or five inches long. The wolf spider's pincerlike mouth. The skunk's long, white-striped tail.

And I still wasn't done changing. Eyes were popping in and out on my face. Open, closed, open, closed. Then, finally, I was looking at the world through a grand total of ten eyes: the spider's already bizarre combo of compound and simple eyes, plus two fully functional skunk eyes.

A lot of eyes. A lot of very twisted views of my environment.

<Marco. How's it going?> Jake said.

<Fine. Fine, everything fine,> I cried. A third pair of feet arrived.