I was afraid to open my eyes. The screaming hadn’t stopped, and after what I’d just been through, I was afraid that if I did open them I’d see the sun lurking above me. In spite of all that, I needed to know what happened, and to do that, I needed to open my eyes. I took a breath, worked up the will power, and forced them open.

The first thing I noticed were the plants. The small trees that had lined the edge of the square weren’t quite so small anymore. The largest of them now stretched up to at least 150 feet tall, and they weren’t the only plants to change. Well maintained hedges now sprawled outwards in a tangled mess, weeds that once grew between cracks in the concrete had torn that concrete to pieces as vines and stalks exploded into being, and houseplants turned to ivy that aggressively coated the walls of the nearest buildings.

The second thing I noticed were the dozens of other people slowly beginning to pick themselves off the ground like I had. Only they didn’t quite look like people anymore. An old man who’d been sitting on a bench had lost at least half his height, growing long pointed ears, and what appeared to be a mushroom cap on his head, a younger man who’d been walking with his family had taken a turtle like appearance, with what looked to be some kind of water dish built into his head, and a woman who’d been on her phone just to my right now sported the head and legs of a bull and seemed to have doubled in height.

Oddly enough, not everyone seemed to have changed, and those who hadn’t changed seemed to have been unaffected by whatever that awful acid trip had been. I then had two realizations in very quick succession. My first realization was that I had been affected, and that meant I’d probably changed somehow, my second realization was that the bull lady was now looking at me, and while I won’t claim to be an expert on reading bovine emotions, she didn’t seem particularly happy.

She took a step towards me, I took a step back.

The turtle man fled from his family.

She took a step towards me, I took a step back.

The old man had a knife, he was screaming.

She took a step towards me, I took a step back.

She charged me, I ran.

I didn’t know where I was going, all I knew was that I couldn’t be here. If people were turning into monsters, I needed to get as far away from other people as possible. I cut into an alley with the bull woman close behind, she was fast, way faster than me, but judging by the crashing sounds behind me, tight corners didn’t exactly agree with her. I bolted down the alley, hurtling past some kind of troll creature. The moment I was out I took a sharp right, looking for some kind of cover. Before I could come up with something, the bull lady came crashing out into the street. She charged me head on once again. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I could hardly bring myself to move, I was just too afraid.

Silver and blue flashed somewhere behind my eyes, and my hands were up before I even realized what I was doing. Almost on instinct, I grabbed her by the horns, stopped her dead in her tracks, and flung her through a wall. The troll thing, having followed us out of the alley, looked at me, looked at the brand new hole in the wall, looked back at me, and then stomped back into the alley. 

The unnatural strength I had suddenly gained faded just as quickly as it had appeared, and it seemed my consciousness was fading with it. I took a moment to gather myself, found what appeared to be the least damaged structure nearby, staggered inside, and promptly passed out.