Checking to make certain he had closed the door to his room, Thomas slipped the impromptu shoelace-turned-chain around his neck, pulling his hair through the leather strap. He looked at himself in the mirror and tried on a confident grin. He got a prickly feeling looking at his reflection. Wow... He tried to look at himself in the profile, switching his expression for one that could only be called sly. Every time he saw the fox amulet, he liked it more and more. He had thought that maybe with something so nice looking around his neck, it might get more attention than him, but to his pleasant surprise it seemed to accentuate his image, all for the better. He let an honest expression of pleasure surface. I'm going to wear this all the time, under my shirt, he thought, tucking the fox medallion into the neckline of his T-shirt. The metal, whatever it was, was warm against his skin, and the prickly, tingling feeling increased. Mom and dad won't notice, and if Katherine does she won't say anything about it. And if anyone at school sees, well, I don't have to tell them where I got it.
Thomas patted the amulet in it's hidden spot, and looked up into the mirror. He frowned at the dark end of his nose. How did I not notice that dust be... fore... He had brought up his hand to wipe away the large spot of black that looked like grease on his nose when he had seen his fingernails in the mirror. Now he turned his hand over and gave it a hard stare. They had grease on them, too! And his other hand's fingernails as...
Thomas's train of thought temporarily derailed. He stared, speechless, as his fingernails thickened and lengthened, curving just a little to form small, sharp claws. That's when the pain hit him, and floored him with one blow.
It was like being dipped, repeatedly, into a flaming mixture of acid, napalm, and broken glass. Thomas writhed on the floor for a while, unable to scream because he was in too much pain. After a while, he mercifully passed out, and the changes went much faster then after he stopped resisting.