How Did I Go To the Beast World in My Pajamas?

Chapter 11: Shifting

Now that Samantha finally had the opportunity to learn more about the strange events of the past few days, she hardly knew where to begin questioning St. Benjamin. She decided to start with the absolute basics. "Where am I?" she asked the strange man. "This hovel," he sneered, "is located in the forest near the sea." "Does the forest have a name?" she asked, trying to get more thorough answers from her conversation partner. "No. What need has a forest for a name? It is the forest near the sea, not the forest on the other side of the Beast City," he replied, though now his voice held curiosity as well. "The Beast City? Why is there a city called the Beast City?" Samantha asked, hoping she was finally getting somewhere with her questions. "Multiple races of beastmen have gathered there to live," St. Benjamin answered, amazed that she had never heard of such an important place, "The Apes, Wolves, Tigers, and Leopards rule the city, but almost any beastmen may live there if they choose to. They think that they are safer in the city with its walls and its large numbers, but that also makes them a bigger target for danger."

"Who are the beastmen? What danger are they trying to protect themselves from? And why do those races of beastmen rule the city?" Samantha asked, trying not to forget any of the new questions she had. "Who are the beastmen?" St. Benjamin laughed, "We are the beastmen! What tribe do you come from, that you don't even know what you are? I have never heard of females being protected to such an extent." "I don't have a tribe," she whispered honestly, "Or, if I did, I left them behind a long time ago. If I am a beastman, what is it that makes me one?" St. Benjamin eyed her warily, "A female is too weak to live without a tribe; if you are dying, this must be why. What form do you take when you shift?" Samantha sighed, frustrated that she had ceased to understand St. Benjamin, "Females can leave their tribes where I come from," she asserted, "and this is the only form that I have. Is that unusual for the people that live here?" St. Benjamin paused, inhaling her scent as if to calm himself before replying, "It is not unusual, it is completely unheard of. It is impossible."

Samantha was shocked. She had only heard about shapeshifting in the fantasy stories that were popular in her culture. Maybe St. Benjamin meant something different by 'shifting'; she decided to ask him. "What happens when you shift? How do you do it? I'm certain that I've never shifted before," she explained, "and I have never seen anyone else shift, either." "Female," St. Benjamin snarled, beginning to lose his patience- "Samantha," she interrupted, "call me Samantha, please." "Samantha," he practically growled, "I will demonstrate for you, but if I find out that you are tricking me, for whatever reason, I will cease this nonsense and eat you alive." With that, he grabbed her plump hand and held it to his scruffy cheek, and Samantha felt his skin begin to harden and change shape. She gasped and tried to pull her hand away, but his shifting hand held hers firmly in place. 

St. Benjamin's body grew larger, his arms lengthened and his hands turned to pincers. His skin no longer felt like skin at all; it was smooth but tough, almost like plastic, with a sparse number of hairs jutting out every so often. To Samantha, in the dark, St. Benjamin felt like a large lobster. 'Oh, god,' she thought, 'lobster. I would die to eat lobster right now.' She sniffed the air out of instinct, just to see if he smelled like lobster, but truthfully, Samantha had never smelled a live, wild lobster before. Regardless, her senses still registered St. Benjamin's scent. He smelled bitter, in much the same way as the fireflies she played with during summer, with a rich nuttiness and a hint of sesame, though Samantha was aware that her extreme hunger might easily have accentuated the notes of food. She was briefly reminded of the times she was unable to eat, but still needed to provide food to her cats; even the special-formula cat food had an appetizing odor back then.

At the last second, Samantha remembered what had happened when she was dishing out cat food and the smell had appealed to her; she had nearly fainted face-first into the cat food bowl, much to the dismay of her hungry companion. Feeling her body becoming rapidly lighter, Samantha grabbed onto St. Benjamin's face - which was no longer a face, but some kind of shell or mask with a ridge on its underside - with the hand he had placed there. Her other arm reached forward toward what had been his shoulder and was now a jointed segment of his claw, and its triangular shape caused her arm to slide down and into a crevice of his body, lower than her other hand. There was nothing for her to hold onto in the ridges of his exoskeleton, and she fell forward into the crook of a giant scorpion claw as she began to lose consciousness from shock and hunger. Although it was completely dark, Samantha began to see amorphous shapes surrounded by gold light, and she could no longer support her own body. 

As she fell, she found herself caught by something suddenly wrapped around her tummy. Its movement was quick and accurate, and it pulled taut behind her as it held her still. For a second, Samantha had the wind knocked out of her, but as she reached down to touch the chitin-covered scorpion tail wound around her, it became looser, though it continued to gently wind around her torso. Samantha was able to recover herself part-way, but she was still dizzy, and when she tried to stand up fully, she began to fall backward. This time, instead of falling, she felt St. Benjamin use his tail to help lower her back onto her bed of furs. It felt bumpy as it released her, and Samantha could hear the clicking of St. Benjamin's footsteps as he approached her again. Suddenly, the tail and the clicking stopped, and she heard his voice faintly above her, repeating her name.