You Are Sick

“You are sick, lowly, and I have saved you,” the man’s voice rang out like wood clocking on stone. “You ought to be more grateful. Anyone else would have tied up such a miserable wretch and let the sea have him.”
The Creature huddled deeper toward the floor, trying to be smaller, trying to disappear. Its head ached. Its skin itched like being bitten all over by ants. It wasn’t sure how it knew such things, but the concepts were there, though hazy, in its head. There was a sharp crack as a whip’s cruel tails lashed across its shoulder and the side of the head and it flinched, giving a little cry.
“I do this to teach you,” the man said, winding up the whip into a coil in his hand. His voice took on a slightly more kindly tone. “I must have you understand. I must help you to get well. You must trust me, you must obey me. Any further insubordination shall be dealt with more painfully than this. You are a learning creature, and I do not believe in sparing the rod.”
Only about every other word made any sense to Creature, and he was distracted by the burning stripe across his arm, shoulder, and head. The skin flared like the doctor had held burning stick against him and dragged it along his body. The skin itched, it felt like it was boiling. He longed to slough it off.
The doctor approached and reached out a hand to help Creature up. Creature flinched, thinking the hand was going to slap into his aching head, but sensed the true intention. Seconds too late. The doctor barked a command, with a curse. Creature heaved himself to his feet, head weaving, unsteady, his body feeling squeezed, bloated, aching, and dizzy all at once. The doctor stepped back and surveyed him, a strange smile on his face.
“By all my hours in the lab,” he murmured to himself. “Would that I could capture this creature, here, and lock it into being forever. Beautifully horrifying.” Creature wrung its hands, feeling woozy. Its vision swirled in and out, its body swayed. The doctor grinned, a horrible, toothy grin. Creature especially noticed the teeth.
“Come this way,” he said, motioning with this hand, almost gentle. Creature obeyed, accompanying the doctor from the wet, dripping cell and down the range toward the laboratory. Others of the doctor’s creations, screamed, begged, snarled, sobbed, or lay still and dead in other cells as they passed. Creature heard things from each of them, saw memories. He wished he could squeeze his eyes shut and block them out, but that only made the sounds and feelings in his head stronger. He stumbled. The doctor slapped him, then pulled him upright.
“You must see yourself in this state. How I wish I could capture you, just like this!”
Creature stumbled into the laboratory, and the doctor pulled the sheet off a large mirror, hopelessly expensive, that covered an entire wall.
“Look at yourself,” the doctor said, almost in a quiet whisper. Dread pulsed through Creature’s form. He wasn’t entirely sure why. If he could have turned and run away, he would have, but he knew he’d stumble over his heavy, awkward feet, and the doctor would dbe upon him in a moment, chiding him for his disobedience yet again.
“Move!” The doctor snarled, making Creature jump. He could feel the lurid fascination of the wretched thing in front of him emanating from the doctor like a stink. Creature swallowed hard and then moved in front of the mirror. He gasped, and tears came to his eyes.
His left eye bulged, looking milky white, though he could see from it. It was quite a lot larger than the other eye, which was small, purple-irised, lolling about in its socket. The left side of Creature’s face seemed to have exploded some from a containment. The top and back of his head heaved a little with the powerful disgust he felt looking at himself, the purplish-grey illithid skin bulging over the brand-new illithid brain. Some of the white drow hair still clung in places, like netting breaking hand straining over a catch far too big for the net to handle. His hair had mostly fallen out now, though thin whisps still remained. A fine jaw line still existed on the right side, but was quickly eclipsed by the four skin-tubes forming from his lips and nose and chin, soon to be prehensile tentacles. They swayed a little now, jerking and twitching. He could control them, but the control was rudimentary. Drool dripped from one of the tubes, his jaw unable to close anymore. He could feel a few drow teeth still clinging on by their deep roots, but he knew that only three remained. He’d pulled one out, almost as long as his baby finger, that morning, adding it to the pitiful pile in the corner of his cell.
The smooth blackish-purple drow skin was looking more ashy and dead than ever, stretching, tearing, sloughing off of him. On his left arm, the skin had finally given way to the illtihid form and was hanging from his elbow like rags. He could still feel the air moving through the flailing skin. Pulling it off would be painful. The left shoulder, neck, and head had already burst forward in all its illithid promise, but the rest of the body was slow to follow suit. Creature was naked, and could see his ribs clearly with each breath. His belly caved in, starved, wretched, undernourished. His genitals, the drow genitals, hung limp and lifeless, practically useless now. There would come a time when those two would slough off with the rest of him. Some distant, deep part of him felt a chill at that, a growing horror. But as he pursued that feeling to determine its source, it vanished. His feet were lengthening and his legs were swollen, and he could see new tears in both legs that had not been there a day ago.
Creature looked himself in the eye in the mirror, and looked away again. He’d seen himself, just as the doctor had commanded.
“A thing of beauty,” the doctor said. “Look at yourself! LOOK AT YOURSELF!” Creature turned his gaze back to himself, looking into the purple eye, then into the white one. He felt sick.
“You are a monster, a thing of evil,” the doctor said, almost like he was praying. “Sickening horror, incarnate! When you are a fully-fledged illithid, you will be terrifying and powerful.”
I don’t feel powerful Creature thought, in his way. He didn’t yet use much language in his private thoughts. He only saw a pathetic creature, caught between an old life he barely remembered and a new life he could not fathom. Every moment that passed felt anew, every day a new journey into misery, and pain. Seeing the stretching drow skin now, he could see the worst itching spots, and longed to scratch. His new left hand’s nails were longer, blacker, though fewer than the drow hand he still sported on the right, which was bulbous with changing bone structure. One finger was dead. He raised his hand finally to touch the lash from the whip.
“You know that I love this?” The doctor said, approaching and touching the back of Creature’s head. Creature wanted to stiffen, but his breaths were beginning to run shallow, coming in gasps. Panic was setting in, panic at what he saw. “You grow upset, do you not like what you see?” The doctor said, turning to look into Creature’s white eye in the mirror. “Not to worry. You will settle soon. I shall see you through it, if you only obey me.” Creature felt tears coming down the drow side of his face. The illithid side lacked tear ducts.
“ANSWER ME!” The doctor shrieked, his voice suddenly high and ringing off the surgical instruments and saws scattered around the laboratory. Creature jumped, the scream coming too close to his sensitive head, and nodded. Inwardly, he stammered.
<<Y-y-yes, M-Master,>> he said. The doctor caught sight of the tears and began to laugh.
“Oh, tears, are they? How droll, how very cute. You might cry, you pathetic worm.” He backhanded Creature to the drow side and sent him spinning to the floor. Then the doctor gave him a stern kick to the chest, flipping him over. He was never tall as a drow, even for a drow, and the illithid body was going to be less dense than the drow body. He flipped easily. The doctor crouched down.
“Now, perhaps you think me wicked for treating you so? Fear not. The world is far more wicked than I, and I shall never hurt you to death, my prize.” He moved some drow hair out of Creature’s eyes, tought for a moment, then tugged that piece of scalp completely off, releasing a bubbling bit of the illthid head held back by the scalp. It hurt, and Creature’s jaw opened wider as he cried out, his voice sounding like a harsh cough in his throat. The doctor looked down at the necrotic piece of hairy scalp he held, then stood and walked over to table.
“Back to your cell with you,” he said over his shoulder, holding the scalp near the light. “I shall call you when I am ready for you.” Creature hesitated a moment, but the doctor was too engrossed in his study of the piece of scalp to pay much mind.
Creature crawled out the lab door, so as to stay below the mirror, to avoid it. He never wanted to see his image again.
All the way down the range he stumbled slowly to his cell, being screamed at by the other inmates, who cursed him. Why? Why should they treat him so, they who were in his same position, almost? But their bodies had been cut up by the doctor and turned into something else. Creature had—just come into existence. He didn’t understand why. He remembered nothing before a few days prior. Some conceptual knowledge remained of the old brain, of the host brain, though the illithid DNA was slowly taking it over and the old synapses would soon be repurposed to serve the master illithid code.
 
Creature heaved himself into his cell and pushed the door closed, sinking to the floor. His breath came in gasps, tears pooled beneath his drow face. He curled into a ball as more curses and insults hurled his way. An old, bent man in a neighboring cell, missing an ear, an arm, and a leg all on the same side, scooted over toward the bars and looked down at the sorrowing Creature.
“Dawn’t listen to ‘em,” came that voice, that beautiful voice, a lullaby to sore ears. Creature continued to sob. Hagan wouldn’t mind, nor would he judge.
“That was right cruel, that,” Hagan said in a whisper, some time later after Creature’s sobs subsided. “Hain’t no one ever asked for treatment such as this, and ye’ve taken it all on.” Creature sniffled but said nothing. Hagan had found it increasingly hard to understand him anyway, with his jaw flapping like a wounded bird beneath the natal tentacles. His gums itched as the small, sharp illithid teeth were beginning to erupt. “Can I tell ye a story?” Creature sniffed and nodded, staring at nothing.
“Once, there was a knight, a bit stupid, this one, but good-hearted. He had heard of a magic sword, and could use it to save this princess what got herself stuck in a tower. She were beautiful, that, and the stupid knight knew he were stupid, and had to race his brothers to that sword to win the princess’s favor. So he waited until they left, then announced to their da that…”
The story droned on and on and Creature nearly forgot his pain and horror and sorrow, so enraptured by the pictures his neighboring prisoner could paint with his words. The Tale of the Stupid Knight was one among many that Hagan the Traveling Storyteller had in his collection, to share in inns, around campfires, along dark roads, and dancing gaily in cities for coin. It was his trade, his mark. He’d learned early on that the poor, plighted Creature tended to like stories of strong warriors best, vying for prizes, helping others. He knew many stories, many beyond that particular genre, but he took pity on the poor Creature, and offered his services to calm and comfort the poor thing.
 
A few days later, when Hagan was finally harvested, he did not survive. All Creature was able to obtain from his friend was Hagan’s tongue, probably Creature’s most prized part of him. He held the tongue up in his small window for the hot sun outside to dry, watching the twisted thing spin in the air. He lovingly shaved the rot from it, slept with it clutched tightly in his hands to keep the rats from it, and at last when the thing was dry enough, Creature strung it on a bit of spare thread he’d found and wore it round his neck, tucking it beneath his slightly longer tentacles. Hagan, his friend, might be gone, but the tongue that wove his favorite tales of knights and valor, would remain close to his purple illithid heart.