The whole incident had occurred over a break. We had been home from college when it happened. Molly and I had known each other since High School, though up until a year before the "incident" our friendship had been strictly fraternal. I know the whole childhood friends becoming lovers thing sounds cliche, but it does happen. It happened with Molly and me.
Anyway, I had just gotten her out of that freak show's laboratory. She had passed out in my arms after saying they'd "stuck her" with something. I wanted nothing more then to beat them senseless for violating her, but I had to get her out of there, and so I did the only thing I could think to do. I took her home.
In retrospect, I probably should have taken her to a hospital. I mean, the doctors could have figured out what those freak show guys had actually done and maybe even devised a method to slow it down or even stop it... but at the time I was seeing conspiracies around every corner. I had thought that the freak show people would be waiting for Molly at the hospital and all I'd do was return her to them. So I took her home.
No one was home when I arrived. My folks were probably still at work, but I had my key. I took Molly in and placed her on the living room couch that my parents had. As I set her down, I noticed her skin was practically hot to the touch and I set about to help her out.
I applied a wet washcloth to Molly's forehead but it didn't seem to help much.
"Water..." she muttered, sounding delirious.
I got her a plastic cup full of water and put it to her lips, which she managed to sip. Suddenly, she flailed her arms, knocking me over and the cup of water on her. It rolled off to the floor, but not before dumping its contents on Molly's chest. She clutched her arms to her soaked chest and not out of modesty - she wanted to hold her arms to the water.
"Water..." she muttered again.
Picking Molly up off the sofa, I carried her to my bathroom and gently put her in the tub. I turned on the faucet and tried to find a pleasant temperature for her. She curled up in the tub as it slowly filled with water. I sat down on the floormat next to the tub, watching and worrying. As the water rose, Molly seemed to relax and stretched her legs out.
After the tub was almost full, I turned off the water. I put my hand to Molly's forehead and found her temperature seemed to have dropped back to normal.
I don't know how long I sat there watching her in silence before she finally awoke.
"These pants are so uncomfortable" were the first words she said. It wasn't a playful comment, but seemed like she was stating a annoying fact. She unbuttoned them and pushed them down until they were completely of then casually dumped the soaking wet pants in my lap.
"Ah...much better..." she said with a relaxed sigh. She leaning back in the tub like someone without a care in the world and stuck her feet out of the tub.
With her feet almost in my face, I noticed two things unusual: the skin on her feet hadn't wrinkled up like feet normally do when they're soaking wet and there seemed to be something between her toes, like webbing.
That was when her legs began to change...