Helena huddled against the wall, shaking and tightly curled in her ball. There was a slow growing pain in her arms and hands, not quite the usual soreness from her stiff muscles. The same kind of pain was growing in her face, not just her forehead or temples or even sinuses but all around her cheeks, chin, nose, and eyes. Even her lips started to feel stiff and painful.
The pain grew, and as she stared at her arms she started to watch as her hands swelled abnormally, the bones within making loud cracking noises, a feeling like they were being crushed enough to summon a sob that swelled to gasping shouts of pain and hysteria. Her hands continued to bubble and swell, uneven and grotesque. One of the bubbles on the back of her hand burst suddenly into blood and some kind of black puss, spraying the fluids on her face and the floor around. Yet the wound continued to bubble and grow, like she was boiling from the inside. Her hands dropped from their grip on her legs now, now mostly swollen to the size of cantaloupes and still bubbling and growing with intense pain and spreading now up her arms. Skin on her fingers and palms was pealing off like burning paper to reveal black, burnt looking insides and more boiling blood.
Her face was becoming just as painful, the feeling of stiffness growing with it. Although she continued to cry, her lips seemed to stick together, eventually seeking entirely. Although the sense of touch on the surface was fading, she could barely make out the feeling of hot tears and musus pouring out of her eyes and nose, and it seemed as if even her ears were bleeding and running down her face. When a bright drop of red fell from her face to the floor though, she realized that the tears and snot had turned to blood, the warm liquid was trickling from every black it could escape, even her sealed mouth. Shakily lifting her hands, now more black puss and blood than anything else and easily the size of a couple of volleyballs, she gently touched them to her face and pulled them away to see a massive amount of blood there, almost outlining her face.
She suddenly became aware of the pain in her legs when she tried to press herself further against the wall, finding them fused together at the ankles and knee caps, not bubbling like her hands but the skin still cracking and spilling blood and a bit of the unnatural puss. Everything in her wanted to scream, everything felt on fire, like she was burning alive. Her golden hair was falling from her head in huge wet clumps as the blood and puss bubbled up from beneath it. Her sealed lips would not move though, and only more blood seemed to flow out from them.
Her hands grew and grew with her lower arms until they were far bigger than even her own head. Her legs fused together and the blood and puss flowed from where her shoes stopped them from continuing. Suddenly, she felt as if something was pealing away from her face, but at the same time like someone was skinming it off of her. Her lips pealed free and opened at last to let out a screech that was hardly even human, gurgling and continuous as if she didn't even require air to make it. Onto her own lap her own face fell, hardened into mask. Blood poured from where it had been, now just a bloody pulp of muscle and cartalige, it even took with it her eye lids and the outer, white and blue slice off her eyes. Her lips were completely gone, leaving her white teeth bared in a bloody smile.
There was more giggling as blood finally cut off the screaming, and finally, the body slumped over into the pool of dark red fluid, the mask sliding away about a foot. Without enough blood remaining in her body, her heart came to a slow halt, and her body shuddered the last life from her.
Outside the door, the young tech shakily radioed to the professor the news. With his back turned, he failed to notice the body turning completely black, like a new skin was sliding evenly across it. The clothes below her waist seemed to fall away like dust, but the sweatshirt above seemed to smooth out and join with her body, the loose hood becoming the only tell tale sign of it but for the smooth covering on her chest. The eye lids returned, for a moment almost making it appear as if she was sleeping on the floor... Until the completely blood red eyes snapped open.
By the time the technician turned back around, the body had disappeared, but in the corner one could makeout a large shadow, floating there with its back turned.
"Wha-" he couldn't even finish the word when her head snapped around to look at this from the corner of her eye, revealing bright red streaks down the black dace like trails carved into tiny bloody tears. Although her hands hung loopy at her sides, her lower body had become a dexterous tail-like appendage, and it now held the bloody mask that had been her face. Now beyond spooked, the technician backed away, quickly calling up a new report and high tailing it away with the excuse of needing to complete his report.