I woke up with a pounding headache, the sound of sand in the wind and the burning heat of the sun on my face. Slowly I opened my eyes, raising my arm to block out the blinding light.

Ow, my head is killing me, I thought to myself with a groan, where the hell am I? what the hell happened?

I raised my head from the brick-sized rock it was on and found myself to be laying on some kind of raised stone table, kind of like an altar.

Well, that explains the headache, I thought, looking at the black stone I had been using as a pillow.

I tried to think back to what I was doing before this moment but the best I got was eating a bag of chips from the local chipy down the road while watching the sunset over the harbour. It felt like an old memory though, like it was something I did last week, not yesterday.

Oh crap, did I go on a sesh with Ethan and the lads again?

I lowered my arm so I could get a better look around, actually now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see it wasn’t really an arm anymore, more like a leg really and the thing on the end was not a hand but something more like a hoof.

At that point I lowered my new leg and had a good look at the rest of me and found I now had some kind of chitin plates all over me, like I was some kind of beetle mixed with a body shape that was reminiscent of an equine and I also seemed to have another set of smaller arms tucked up to my chest, these arms had hands but they looked more like the bastard child of a birds talon and an insect foot instead of my normal human hands.

Oh yeah…defiantly a sesh with the lads, now how did I get to a desert? The nearest one is like 2000 miles away.

I slid off the stone altar and tried to stand up, I had some difficulty as it seemed I was now a quadruped but managed to get my balance fairly quickly and took a look around.

I seemed to be in the ruins of some old building, there was no sign of a roof, and looking up I could see a cloudless blue sky with the burning sun not quite overhead.

The walls had crumbled to be only a little above my height and I could almost make out carvings in the old stonework, but it was too weathered to tell what they were meant to depict.

I was about to leave the ruin and see what was outside when the black stone on the altar caught my eye again.

For some reason, I had a strong feeling that shouldn’t leave it here, so I reached out with one of my new arms and grasped the stone in my odd hands. It was large, about twice the size of two bricks put together and about the same weight, its shape was an even oval, looking at it in the light I could see it wasn’t entirely black but had flecks of colour on the inside.

After picking up my stony pillow I made my way across the sand-covered floor to what was probably once a doorway and stepped out into a dry wasteland.

Looking around I could see a desert of cracked earth, rocks, and some mountains in the distance, I then walked to the side of the ruins and peered around the corner only to see more desert that slowly turned into sand dunes.

Ok, on the off chance I’m not just tripping balls in the park sandpit and am actually a giant bug and I’m somehow in a desert, what do I do now?

I tried to think back on survival shows I’d watched about deserts and all of them basically said stay with your car and water to make it easy for someone to find you.

Well since no one is going to be looking for me in a desert and I have neither a car, nor water I guess finding some water is the thing I should do first.

Figuring the mountains were more likely to have water than the sand dunes I started to walk, with remarkably little stumbling, in that direction.

It seemed I arrived after midday, so I was lucky enough not to cook in my new shell, in fact, I wasn’t really feeling the heat that much at all, sure it was hot but not so hot that I was uncomfortable.

I walked and walked, the mountains slowly creeping closer hour after hour. I didn’t see another living thing all day, and it was silent other than my footsteps, or rather I should say hoof steps and the sound of sand being kicked up by the wind

After hours of walking the sun began to set and it started getting chilly, but once again the temperature didn’t seem to affect me all that much.

I guess whatever I am right now doesn’t really mind getting hot or cold, that's good, I doubt dying of heatstroke is a nice way to go.

After the sun had set, I found I could still see just fine, which was very helpful on my walk to the foot of the mountains.

As I approached the mountains I found that there was a little more life than there had been in the desert, some small trees and bushes grew in clumps and there was short hardy looking grass growing out of the dry soil, I think I even saw a lizard at one point.

Even though I could see just fine in the dark I was starting to feel tired after walking for most of the day, I looked around for somewhere to sleep but there was still not much around I could use for shelter. In the end, I picked a large boulder and after making sure there wasn’t any snakes or anything hiding around it, I lay down against it and did my best to get some sleep.

As fun as this has been, I would really like to come down now, I really hope I didn’t wander onto the beach and I’m just laying at Ethan's place with a dry mouth.

The next morning, I woke with the sun and found I was still in the ass-end of nowhere and still looked like a bug horse. At this point I was starting to get a bit worried but freaking out was the worst thing to do in this situation, so I took some deep breaths and tried to calm down.

Be chill, man, if you freak out here it could cost you your life. Ok, ok, find somewhere safe and then you can freak out all you want.

As there was still no water around here, I did the only thing I could reasonably do and started walking again, I picked what I thought was North and started to walk along the edge of the mountains hoping to find a stream or something.

After what must have been five or six hours of walking through the dusty grasslands, I was starting to feel hungry and thirsty, not starving by any means, but I wasn’t used to going more than a day without eating something, and I knew going this long without water in this kind of environment couldn’t be healthy at all.

I can’t believe this, how does someone go from being a normal guy to being a wired alien in a desert? Is this some kind of afterlife? Did I get hit by a car, maybe get mugged or something? If it is an afterlife then it can’t be one of the nice ones, not by the looks of it anyway.

Why would I go to a place like this? Sure, I liked to party with the lads, but I never did anything bad to anybody. I’m just a normal guy with a normal life and a nice chill dead-end job… Actually, it could have been days for all I know, I probably don’t even have a job anymore.

This sucks! I don’t understand why this happening to me!

As I walked, I thought about eating some of the dry grass-like plants as I was now at least a little horse-like but thought I would leave that till I really had no other choice.

By early evening the plants were starting to look greener, only a little but it gave me some hope that I was travelling in the right direction.

As the Sun started to set, I could see the shimmering of sunlight reflecting off a lake only about half a mile off, there were even trees and other plants around the lake, I don’t think I had ever been happier to see trees in my life.

The only problem was that there was a steep drop off between me and the life-giving water.

Looking over the edge it was probably about a hundred feet straight down a rocky sandstone cliff, I could see little plateaus that I might be able to safely drop from one to the other but if I stepped wrong, it would be bye-bye bug horse.

The light was fading fast, and I wanted to get to the water before sleeping again, so I started to make the small hops from plateau to plateau. I was almost halfway down when I messed up and jumped out too far, my two left legs hit the very edge of the plateau and slipped off, pulling the rest of me with them.

I bounced off another plateau on the way down and hit the dusty ground with a heavy thud that knocked the wind out of me.

After gasping on the ground for what felt like minutes but was probably only twenty seconds I tried to stand back up, and although I could my left front leg hurt to stand on.

Looking down I could see a spiderweb of cracks running around an indent in the chitin plate on my lower left foreleg, there was greenish blood seeping out of the cracks, and it hurt a bit when I put my weight on the leg.

Oh great, day two and I’ve already hurt myself, I need to cover this up with something, I really don’t want some kind of infection under my chitin…Never thought I would say that in my life.

I started to lick the cracks in my leg, like you do when you get a small cut, as I did, I thought about what I might possibly find out there to cover it up.

Huh, blood tastes a bit different than it used to.

After a couple of seconds, I stopped tasting bug blood and looked at my leg, to my surprise there was a layer of reddish-pink gel over the wound.

Did that come out of my mouth?! What the hell is this stuff.

As I was wondering why my spit turns into a gel, I noticed I didn’t feel any pain coming from my leg anymore and almost before my eyes the gel seemed to harden into a resin-like cast over the wound.

I have built-in painkillers and resin spit? No, no don’t look a gift bug horse in the mouth, if this stops my leg cracks from getting dirt in them then good. The painkiller is also nice and it’s not even numb at all, it’s like it just stops the pain and lets everything else through.

I didn’t think nerves worked quite like that but what did I know, I was a bug horse now, nothing probably worked right inside me anymore.

I looked back up the cliff and could see the plateau I fell from.

Damn, I must have fallen almost 60 feet! I’m lucky I was only hurt this much and didn’t break my damn neck.

After putting some weight on the leg and finding it felt normal I started off towards the water, as I walked through the trees and saw that some had a yellow fruit the size of apples on them, not any kind I knew of but definitely fruit.

Ok, I can’t just go eating strange plants, but I’m actually getting really hungry now. There’s a test you can do right? You just rub some of the fruit juice on your skin and wait to see if you get a rash or something, if nothing bad happens I think it’s meant to be safe. Now I just need to find some bare skin on me.

After a bit of searching, I found the inside of my joints and some parts of my face were leathery skin rather than bug shell. In the end, I rubbed a bit of torn in half fruit on the inner elbow on one of my new smaller arms and went to go drink some water.

I would love to boil the water too, but I have nothing to do that with and no fire so I’m just going to have to risk it and hope I don’t die a slow painful death… Yay.

I drank a couple of mouthfuls and then had to stop after nearly throwing it back up, after that, I drank at a much slower pace.

After drinking I looked at my reflection, the creature staring back at me was not even a little like a human.

My face was kind of like a horse but a little shorter and open at the side like a dogs maw and only covered by lips that ran all the way to the back of my mouth. My face was also covered with chitin plates anywhere that didn’t need to bend.

Opening my mouth, I saw the sharp teeth and fangs of a carnivore with more molar like crushing teeth at the back.

Ok, those are not horse teeth, looks like I’m still an omnivore though, even if there are more sharp teeth than blunt ones, so at least my diet won’t have to change much, small miracles I guess.

I closed my mouth and looked at my eyes, they were a blood-like crimson and slitted like a cat or maybe a lizard’s eyes and forward-facing rather than on the side.

Higher up on my head I had a horn reminiscent of a narwhal or a unicorn on my forehead, but it was thicker than any artwork of unicorn horns I’d seen and also kind of jagged rather than straight, it looked almost like something had taken bites out of the edges or something.

Around my horn, I had sort and spiky crimson hair that reminded me more of spider hair than human hair, and behind my horn running down my long neck, I had a set of spins with a slightly see-through red membrane in between them.

I’m starting to see a colour theme here; I wonder if I’m poisonous? That’s what bright colours on some bugs mean right?

The sun had set by the time I stopped looking at my reflection, so I sat down like a dog and looked at the stars as I waited to see if my arm felt ok, I didn’t see any constellations I knew of, not even one.

It was the last nail in the coffin, at this point I needed to stop kidding myself, this was no dream or trip or hallucination, I really had somehow turned a bug, horse, thing, and I would probably never see anyone I knew ever again.

I started to feel some panic again but slowed my breathing and tried to just stay calm.

I have water and possibly food too, I might not be human anymore, but my situation could be way worse than it is.

After twenty minutes with those thoughts and others like them running through my head, my mind drifted back to the fruit, my arm felt fine, no swelling or tingling there. With that I took a bite out of one of the yellow fruits, the taste was similar to some melon.

Ha, melon trees, whatever, it’s food and that’s all that matters right now.

After eating five yellow melon fruits I lay down under a tree with only my black opal stone for a pillow, the last thing I saw before sleep took me was the lightly cratered face of a moon I didn’t recognise.

The Sun woke me up yet again.

Looking down at myself and saw my bug horse body and, with a sigh, I got up, walked over to the lake, and drank some water before going over to one of the fruit trees to get breakfast. Even after eating last night, I still felt hungry, the fruit took the edge off, but it was like I had eaten a granola bar instead of a meal of five large fruits.

As I was finishing off my breakfast, I heard a buzzing sound, kind of like a Bee might make as it was flying. Looking around I couldn’t see any bugs, other than myself, and the buzzing sound was getting louder, soon enough I could tell what direction it was coming from, and I could also tell there were more than one of the things making the sound.

With no desire to find out what a swarm of giant bees would do to me, I jumped into some of the bushes near the fruit trees and waited to see what the things were.

After about a minute, several smaller versions of me landed at the side of the lake.

Wait a second, I have wings!

I thought to myself, looking at my back and seeing the crimson shell-like plates going down almost to my tail. I tried to lift one from the side with one of my hands only for it to lift slightly reviling a red-tinted insect wing underneath.

God fucking damn it! Those would have saved me time and the fall if I had known about them… And knew how to fly…

After metaphorically kicking myself, I turned back to the smaller bug horses.

There were five smaller ones, they were probably only half my size and there were also two bigger ones that might have been about two thirds my height, the bigger ones were also more chunky, like their chitin was thicker or maybe they were more muscular.

They looked mostly like me but the colours were different, whereas I had a crimson red mane, tail and shell, these bug horses didn’t seem to have manes or tails at all, only the coloured head crest, tail membrane, both of which had a yellow-orange ochre kind of colour to them.

They seemed to be talking but from this distance, I couldn’t hear if they were even speaking English or some bug horse language.

Just as I was trying to decide what to do four of the smaller bugs moved to surround the fifth one while it was talking to the bigger one.

Out of nowhere the four smaller ones grabbed the fifth one by a leg each and held it to the ground, the fifth small one tried to struggle at first but quickly stopped as one of the bigger ones walked up and kicked them in the face.

That came out of nowhere, what the hell man?

The big bug seemed to say some more stuff to the pined one as the other big one walked up beside them, while still talking big bug one put a forehoof on pined bugs head with some force and nodded to the other big one…Who promptly ripped off the pined bugs head crest.

The smaller one looked shocked for about a second before it seemed to register what happened and start to let out a piercing squeal and went back to struggling.

What the fuck?! Why are they doing that?!

I thought as I started freaking out, properly this time.

Is this some kind of bug horse cartel execution?! What the fuck man?

As I was sitting there stunned, horrified and breathing so fast I was getting lightheaded, the pined ones squealing wail was drilling into my head, I couldn’t say why but the wail was really getting to me, I felt hot and cold, and the edges of my vision were going dark.

Something’s wrong, what’s happening to me?

I thought as I tried to shake off the feeling as the sound started going funny, all I could hear was my breathing and the crying wail of the small bug horse.

Make it stop. Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!

And then something snapped and I felt myself stand up from the bush, my mouth opened on its own and from my throat came a horrible sound, it was a horrific screeching scream that seemed to echo back over itself again and again.

And then my body charged at the bug horses.

Author's Note

So I hope that was at least readable There are bound to be obvious mistakes that I've missed so feel free to point them out.

Also let me know it you liked it, I do plan on finishing it in my own time but if other people like it, it might motivate me to wright more then I would if it's just for my self.

Here is a map just in case anyone is into maps