So

The man began his day sweeping dried leaves from his verandah, the fallen messages from the mountain ash.
Autumn and Winter had passed and Spring in the hills blossomed.

A weevil landed on his wooden brush handle.

"Old man, your sweeping reminds me of my time at a zen temple. I would stare at the monks slowly making sand gardens and wonder what truths lay in those rills of grains. When the monks knelt for za zen I would walk round the sand lines until hours later I reached the rock in the middle. I would stare at that rock until the monks lit candles and retired to their futons. In many ways I am still walking those rills".

The weevil walked off and left the old man alone again.

"So," he said and carried on sweeping his leaves.

A lynx came by and sat on the wooden deck. It licked it's paw with it's eyes half shut. Taking it's time it licked it's other front paw, flattening it's fur and giving it a wet sheen. It looked up.

"Old man. Why do you sweep leaves. No matter. It does not concern me. My time is precious. My mind is a clock fuelled with blood. My belly a furnace fired with life. My purpose to eat and eat and make more like me so they can eat".

The lynx caught a vole and chewed it's head off. It slurped the stump like a lollipop and devoured the rest in a single chomp. It left.

The man stooped to gather up one of his piles of leaves. They rustled like torn pages.

"So," he said and carried the litter to his basket.

Stretching his ancient back he noticed a crumpled letter among the leaves.

Carefully opening it he held the thin paper in his hands and read the familiar scrawled handwriting.

To whomever it may concern. I, myself, leave upon my passing the things I have accumulated in my life to the creatures of the world:

Sand for those who seek their answer in fields of glass. Let them be.

Blood for those who's gospel is a hymn of bone, muscle and knowing. It was always thus.

Stone for those who shelter from rains of fire and winds of poison across the earth. May you prevail.

The old man folded the letter carefully and slipped it in his pocket.

"So," he said and carried the basket to the compost heap.

As he tipped out his fresh load he looked up and saw a missile arcing across the sky. It left behind it a trail of white fumes. It would land and explode in a distant valley.

The old man hurried inside his concrete nuclear shelter on the mountainside, around which he'd built a verandah decades ago. He shut himself in and waited for the atomic blast to burst forth and the terrible fall-out to subside overnight.

He would have to wear his mask tomorrow and probably all week.

"So so," he said and after placing his letter with the others he made some tea.

LAMPREY

Gregory looked in the mirror. His reflection was viscous. 

He rubbed his eyes.

Jesus, I've got to stop drinking on Fridays!

His colleagues at the aquarium liked a tipple or two after a long slog all week. Even though most of them worked another shift, the weekend was special. Not as serious. You could let your hair down.

God I feel rough!

He stared at himself again but couldn't wipe the stickiness from his eyes. He was grateful it was his day off. He'd lie in bed till the afternoon and sleep it off before Sophie came round at 7 to go out for dinner.

He drank a large glass of water but for some reason it tasted incredibly salty. He looked at his other hand and to his surprise he was holding the salt bottle. The cap was off. He'd poured it in himself!

Gagging he bent over the sink and hawked up a large gob of slime, which landed on the metal with a wet splat.

Gregory was sweating now and before he could stop himself he drank another large glass of salty water.

Struggling to breathe he staggered to bed and tossed and turned like a newborn for the next few hours; completely covered up with his quilt.

During this fitful slumber Gregory coughed up gobbets of mucus all over his pillow, which, to his horror, he sucked back up voraciously.

His mouth began to pout, his pursed lips moving in and out every other second. His teeth began to gnaw uncontrollably at his quilt. Saliva drooled onto his bed in thick pools.

Gregory was losing control. His mind became hostage to an alien force. Something was taking him over from the inside. What in God's name could it be? If he could work that out then he might be able to combat it. Then it hit him. His eyes opened wide with recognition. Oh my God! he gurgled through reforming jaws.

It must have been when he cut his hand cleaning a tank. His open wound must have got contaminated. But what tank was it? He tried hard to remember. And then he did.

Oh Christ! Hagfish! Nooooo!

The words bubbled out of a mouth no longer human but the tears in Gregory's eyes were. He sat up and sobbed and the tears ran into an ever-widening hole beneath his nose where his mouth had been. His teeth had formed a circle around the edge of the hole and the beginnings of new teeth were sprouting in a concentric ring around his vertical palette. A sucker in the middle valved in and out oozing sticky mucus.

In desperate need of water Gregory tried to stand but to his terror his legs and feet had fused together down the middle, giving his lower limbs a tail-like look.

Gregory fell to the floor hard. Trying to break the impact he realised that his arms were also fused to his body. He landed face down on the carpet with a wet splat..

His cat Sabe padded over to see what was going on. Enticed by a fishy smell it licked Gregory's face.

All at once the cat was sucked into Gregory's new radula and the animal began to whine as its lifeblood was slowly but surely siphoned out. It screamed as its claws desperately mauled at its owner's strange new head.

It didn't matter. Gregory no longer felt pain the same way a human did. He flopped around along the floor with the dying cat and gradually flipped into the bathroom looking increasingly like a long pink fish.

Sliding into the bath he nudged the cold shower lever on. Holding his face beneath the redeeming jets his head continued to alter until it was simply an extension of his long uniform snake-like body, neckless with a huge gaping mouth riddled with a swirl of sharp teeth. Gregory looked like a living saw drill.

Letting the shower water pour over his mouth the hag-man writhed in ecstasy as his skin got smoother, stimulated by the life-giving liquid. He no longer breathed through his shrivelling lungs but through nine gills that had formed where his ears had been.

Suddenly the apartment door opened. The hag-human stiffened.

"Greg! Its me! You ready?"

The thing that once was Greg peered from the bathwater and attempted to say his girlfriend's name.

"Ssshosi!"

"Greg. Is that you?"

Sophie made her way to the bathroom.

"Stop messing around. We'll be la......."

The girl saw the monstrosity slithering in the water with what looked like a cat and screamed.

The creature stopped dead and after sucking the remaining juices from Sabe flipped out its hollowed skin, where it landed at Sophie's feet staring up at her.

Sophie screamed again.

She tried the door handle but the lock had jammed. She was trapped.

At that moment the thing in the bath fixed its tiny eyes on her and looking straight at Sophie its horrendous mouth started to pout and pulsate. The creature's body began to lift itself over the bath edge.

Sophie knew that if this beast got hold of there would be no escape and she would die.

Reacting quickly before it cleared the bath she kicked its head back into the tub and turned on the hot tap. Boiling water spurted out over the thing and it writhed in agony banging its head and tail against the sides.

Sophie had once boiled a slug by mistake and she was praying for a similar but awful result.

She got it. As the boiling water covered the hagfish it thrashed and thrashed, producing large amounts of thick slime.

Before too long the creature was rolling frantically in a bath of its own thick hot mucus, screaming a high pitched note and clearly dying. It stopped moving, looked at the girl and seemed to deflate like an empty bag,  its circular mouth falling off as it gargled a single word.

"Sophie".

Sophie turned off the hot water and collapsed on the floor.

She just stared and screamed.