As you keep obsessively moving your hands around your trunk and ears, you suddenly get an intense tickle in your throat. You make a quick attempt to clear it, but that only seems to irritate it more. A few coughs then turn into a fit, and you quickly find yourself hacking and choking until tears fill your eyes. Suddenly, with a heaving splutter, your body discharges a chunk of black liquid a bit smaller than your fist.
You groan as you immediately realize your mistake in assuming that the elephant hadn't left anything behind inside you. You strain to regain your breath as you start stumbling away when you hear a human voice say, "Wait! It's not what you think!"
You cautiously turn around toward the voice. On the ground where you left it, the puddle of latex is shifting and stretching off the ground. It slowly takes the form of a small pixie as its color shifts until it looks similar to a rubbery version of your own skin. As her shape settles, the pixie suddenly alights to the air with fluttering wings and laughs as she shoots towards you, stopping about a foot in front of your face.
"Sorry, I should have known you would have gotten the wrong impression when I came out that way, but I didn't have much choice. I had to keep a low profile until I knew that we had properly gotten away," the pixie said happily.
"What... How... I don't... Uh, wh-who are you?" you manage to stammer out.
"Oh, I guess introductions are always the best way to start. My name is," she began, before opening her mouth and emitting a cacophony of squeaks and rubbery stretching sounds like a thousand balloons being squished and rubbed together simultaneously, "but I know you human types don't do well with our language, so you can just call me Tex."
Working just to keep up, you reply, "Isn't that a boy's name?" without thinking.
Tex laughs, and suddenly her head shifts to look more masculine as she replies in a deep southern drawl, "Who says I ain't? No, we reproduce more or less asexually, as I think you've already witnessed. Words like sex or gender don't really apply to us other than the forms we choose to adopt. I can look pretty much however I choose." Abruptly, her head changes again, elongating and flattening out as her mouth expands forward. You find yourself looking at a rubbery replica of a piranha head, but it continues shifting. The fish mouth splits vertically and extends in opposite directions, expanding into two separate maws, both identical to the original. Each is turned 45 degrees away from how the mouth should sit on a normal fish's face, coming just short of meeting each other in the middle. The changes still don't stop as the entirety of her head splits in in a similar fashion, expanding into two copies of the weird double-mouth face.
As you stare in awe at the shifting little creature, the piranha heads come to life, chomping their jaws and making a terrifying hissing noise as Tex lunges towards your face without warning. You jump and about fall over as she stops just short of biting your trunk. Her heads quickly press together and snap back into her original female face as she doubles over in the air, giggling uncontrollably.
"Sorry," she laughs while catching her breath, "I couldn't help myself. But when dealing with humans I normally choose what I assume will be a more calming and trustworthy appearance."
Looking at her warily you say, "So, you're one of them," as you gesture vaguely back towards where you encountered the elephant. "You're one of those weird latex monsters."
"Well, I feel like 'monster' is a bit hominocentric. I would say we're polymorphic carnivores, but seeing as you are our prey, I guess I can let that one slide."
"Wait, you EAT PEOPLE?!" you exclaim.
"Huh, you didn't know? I thought we saw you watch that wolf eat that man before you knew that the elephant was stalking you. Besides, I wouldn't take it personally. We eat each other sometimes too, like that dumb elephant."
"I didn't think he ATE him! I thought he just, you know, changed him. Made him like you."
"Oh, well I guess you wouldn't understand. We require a certain kind of essence to survive -- that of the mass or form of regular life. We can consume normal animals, which many do at first to incorporate the forms that you've seen instead of being stuck as amorphous blobs or puddles, but they pale in comparison to the richness of humans."
"Mass and form? What do you mean?"
"Well," she began, posing as if she were standing straight in the air, about to begin a lecture, "we get two kinds of sustenance, that of the actual flesh that makes you up and that of the essence that shapes you. I guess you would call it your humanity, though it's not so grandiose in practice. For example, that anthropomorphic cat you watched earlier: the wolf about consumed his form essence entirely and left him with the animal shape you saw. The more you consume, the harder and slower it is to digest and process, so it's unlikely that he took much if any of his mass essence. Animal form is so cheap in comparison to that of humans, it's practically free to exchange in order to speed up the feeding process, so it's more or less standard practice among us 'monsters'." she said, saying the word sarcastically. "It's possible that if the cat got a hold of another complete human's form essence, he could regain his humanity, though his shape might be different. Plus, losing that much of his humanity, if his mental state was altered, it's likely that he has completely transitioned, converting the rest of his leftover essence to a state of autophagia. I'd bet he's already out hunting with his new brethren."
"In contrast," she continued, "the man with the muzzle likely lost both his form and his flesh. That is, even if he were reshaped to be as human as possible, that portion of him would still be latex. He met a greedier latex beast that opted for quality over quantity. It looks like he escaped before losing too much, but he wasn't nearly as fast as you."
"Wait, so that elephant was trying to eat me!?" you stress.
"Haven't you been paying attention? Of course! It's what we do! But you did something special and were far more spirited than he expected. While he was linked to your essence, you managed to resist and pull back, taking almost enough mass essence to fill out your new forms. That's why this impressive snout of yours is still mostly flesh instead of ending up looking more like us." She smiled as she petted the bridge of your trunk just below your eyes disturbingly similarly to how a rider would pat a favorite horse. You were slightly insulted, but it felt surprisingly good, so you didn't rush to stop her.
"So... I really didn't get away in time. It ate some of me." you say, stunned.
"Eh, I would say aggressively nibbled, considering how well you got off. Your ears are only, what, half elephant? Or, well, two thirds? Surely no more than three fourths. Surely," she said while leaning around the side of your face to get a better look.
"Somehow I don't find that very assuring." You reply flatly. "So, if you're the same as one of those beasts, why are you talking to me instead of trying to suck out my essence or whatever?"
"I am NOT the same as those beasts!" She said putting her hands on her hips. "Sure, we're both very similar creatures, but I'm more advanced. The reason we crave humans so much is that as we absorb your essence, we gain some of your qualities, just as you lose them, you gain ours. Specifically, we crave your intelligence. Those beasts mindlessly eat anything, but once they eat enough people's form essence, they mature. It can be accelerated slightly by consuming and reproducing simultaneously, eating more aggresively. But on instinct, most won't opt to create the extra competition. Once maturing enough, they no longer rely on consumption to survive, though they may continue eating to advance further. Others focus on reproduction without it being a sloppy side-effect of messy eating. Lucky for you, in the wisdom of my age, I prefer to only feed on subjects who ask for it."
"Who in their right mind would ASK to be made into a freak?!"
"Oh, come oooon," she says in a teasing manner. "It can be more fun than you're giving it credit. Look! Wooooooo!" she yells as she suddenly drops and slides down your trunk. You curl the tip up slightly in reflex and she launches off of it back into the air. She quickly diverts her momentum, flying around the right side of your head and back around toward your left ear. She grabs the tip as she rounds it, crashing into the soft flesh and using her inertia to curl it around herself a like a blanket. She tucks her arms down around the outside of her cocoon, holding it tight, and says directly into your ear, "See? Loads of fun."
"Somehow I'm not convinced," You reply flatly.
"Well, not everyone is such a boring curmudgeon," she pouts mockingly as she untangles herself from your ear and flies back in front of you. "Some people find the animal form anywhere from fascinating to sacred. Others may even find alternative forms erotic. I'm told the process can feel quite pleasant, even arousing, if you don't fight back, and some humans just enjoy the experience of the alterations. There was a sweet young couple that came to me during our last period of feasting several centuries ago. Their families didn't approve of their love so, instead of being separated, they offered me their forms. They chose to be totally reduced and melted together as two sentient puddles, infinitely intertwined, forever. When I remember the look on their faces gazing upon each other as they melded I just... ooooh!" she said while holding her belly.
"Wait, if you can change people, can you change me back to normal? Or at least closer to normal?"
"I don't see why you're in such a hurry to escape what many would find a unique, rare opportunity -- a profound life changing experience, forever altering their understanding of them self and their place in the world. That being said, I could alter your form, but..."