The first sign that Jeff knew his own changes were beginning was when he started to feel a tickle in his throat. The air was suddenly becoming very stuffy and thick, and he started gasping. He couldn't breathe.
Hands around his neck, Jeff got up and stumbled towards the patio door at the back of his house, carelessly knocking things over. When he tried to open the door, he slipped and crashed right through it, broken glass scattering around him. His mind told him only one thing: he needed to find water. A lot of water.
Jeff crawled on his stomach across his backyard until he reached his neighbor's house, where a large unoccupied pool greeted him. Just as his strength was about to give out, Jeff managed to push himself into the water. He struggled to take off his clothes and let them float away as he felt his body change.
First, a layer of thin scales spread over his body while thin gills opened up on the sides of his neck, enabling him to take in oxygen from the water. Jeff also noticed that his hands had thin flaps of skin between each finger and his nails were now razor-sharp. When he started paddling around, he found that he could now move almost as fast as an Olympic swimmer, if not faster.
Then, out of nowhere, he felt his nose starting to flatten, and his teeth growing into sharp fangs suited for tearing raw flesh from sea creatures. His hair started to grow out, spreading down his back like a long mane.
But then came the most painful part of his transformation. Jeff could feel some unseen force pulling his legs together, and when they touched, everything--his feet, his ankles, his thighs, and his ass--just melted together into a great big blob of skin. The blob started to elongate and extend, thinning itself out. Eventually, Jake wiggled it and discovered that he now had fins and a long fish's tail. Damn. He'd been hoping to turn into a shark or an octopus.
Still, his new merman body was pretty awesome. Jeff practiced using his tail and hands to move around until he could swim from one end of the pool to the other in under a minute. He swallowed some of the chlorinated water, and found that it tasted sweet and crisp. His eyes, which had always felt irritated when he submerged them in water, could now see clearly.
But then he started to think more about his predicament. If he could only breathe underwater, how would he be able to leave the pool? He needed to find food and a new place to live.
Just then...