CHOICE HAS BEEN MADE

Choose Your Own Adventure! Pick a page number and, if you like, suggest what you think should happen next ("Page 666 and I think the heroine should be crushed by falling debris!"). Full rules here.

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Page 100

Garbage in, garbage out. Vicky had never understood that phrase, which her computer teacher had used during high school parent-teacher conferences. But the mountain of garbage in the Refuse Room ahead was clearly her only way out of the predicament of possibly being seen hairy, pointy-eared, and nub-tailed by anything other than a licensed cosmetologist. So she kicked open the door that was hanging limply on its hinges and waded in.

The place was heaped with refuse from the other areas of the GeneCom lab, with discarded epi-perfumes, specimen vials, and other (even stranger) equipment in addition to the used coffee ground and candy bar wrappers one expected to find. An overhead lamp, the only one, flickered and sparked. The footsteps behind her paused, unable (or perhaps just unwilling) to track Vicky through the mound of crud she was skirting, and moved off in another direction. Vicky jumped for joy at the sound, and landed squarely on something that jabbed her in the ankle.

"Ow!" Vicky cried. Her sneakers suddenly felt extremely tight, and she thought for a panicked moment that the needle which had poked her had been filled with water chestnuts. Instead, she watched as the seams of her expensive Nikeah sneaker strained and snapped, undoing the stitchwork of a hundred Siamese orphans. Sharp points writhed within her sock, which held out a moment longer before bursting to reveal scales and claws. The Kardashian Kreme polish Vicky wore flaked off in chunks as her foot rearranged itself into a decidedly reptilian configuration. The other followed suit a moment later, showering Vicky with bits of fabric and plastic.

"Aah!" She stumbled backwards on her new appendages and knocked over a mound of trash behind her. A cracked suspension tube had been laid across it, and it doused her with some kind of liquid before shattering on the ground. The lights went dim for a moment, leaving Vicky to sputter beneath whatever she'd tipped over. It ignited a terrible storm of cramps and pain, accompanied by the same cracking and snapping Vicky had once heard from Steve Castle, who had died from acute boneitis in high school. She felt her ears slither to even more freakish lengths as her entire face pressed outward. She'd been complimented for her cheekbones; in a moment Vicky was all cheekbone as her fine features were distorted into an equine muzzle.

Stumbling toward the exit in the near dark, Vicky grazed herself on something else before emerging into the light beyond, the loading dock area. Her new tail wriggled and writhed frantically beginning to snap and pop itself. "Oh, no, not you too, little tail…" Vicky moaned. In response, it grew six inches and the blonde hair flashed to scales, with the tiniest hint of fins emerging at the end.

Throughout her painful metamorphic debacle in the Refuse Room, Vicky held out hope that a really good plastic surgeon could get her out of it.

If Vicky should leave the GeneCom labs through the loading dock, turn to page 27.

If Vicky should try to leave through the Production Line, turn to page 19.

If Vicky should try to leave through Specimen Storage, turn to page 31.

If Vicky should wait where she is, turn to page 3.