The Flea Becomes a Woman

Your day started just like any other day, an ordinary morning filled with the same old routine. Today, however, things would take a rather unusual turn. You felt a gradual tingle trickling across your skin, starting from your fingertips. Looking down, you realized that your hands began to shrink. Your once firm fingers with distinct joints condensing into dense, small claws. Your now miniature hands then grew dark and hardened, forming jagged edges shaped like mandibles. Curiously, you ran your new-age mandibles over your face and felt furrowed segments replacing the soft skin. They felt tough yet moveable, resembling the armor of a crustacean. Running your hands down, a foreign sensation hits your rear end. Inexplicably, you could feel it bloating and puffing up into an abdominal structure commonly associated with insects. Your vision blurred briefly before reacquiring focus. When you regained your sight, the world around you seemed eerily magnified. Your vision sharpened into an unexpected panoramic view. Capable of seeing the large eyes of a fly at the other corner of your room, you realized your eyes had become larger and more compound than before. The gender transformation was nothing more surprising than the rest of your transformation. There was no pain or abruptness, but a smooth shift, like a lucid dream morphing scenery. You could feel a sensation you had never experienced before, the reality of becoming a female was subtly manifested throughout your small body. As your body continued to transform, thoughts began to alter. Details of your life started to grow faint, slipping away like loose sand slipping between your fingers. Memories distorted, reality blurred, your mind began weaving lucid images of a flea's life; a world of seeking hosts, avoiding predators, and laying eggs. For what seems like an eternity, in your mind, you are a flea. Looking back on what was once your human life feels like recalling the plot of a film. The memory of being human seemed as foreign to you as being a flea would have been to your human self. You felt nothing, wanting nothing more than to carry on with the demands of your new flea life; a mind consumed by instinctual behavior, devoid of reflection or a sense of time. Though it puzzles you at times, you welcomed your unusual transformation. Despite losing your human self, you got to experience a life you never thought possible. It’s captivating how life, in the smallest forms, continues to strive unabated, in a manner larger than life. In retrospect, you now understand the little details that escape the human eye are home to another world of life thriving on a tiny scale.