The man knew of reveries. It might actually be better said that once he heard of them. Someone, at any idle moment, could gaze off happily into an infinitesimal chasm that broke the dream from its existence. But not him. If he looked past himself he found the deep. The deep that could not be navigated. The deep that saw a dark unbridled. The deep that pulled men lashing against the sides of sanity into a wanton sociopathic mechanization.

There is no deep, he told himself every morning at the mirror, when his eyes bulged from their sockets and his fingers elongated into thin, hard claws. His skin got tough and green and his spine buckled and lurched him forward and a hump grew on his back.

“I am a man,” he said, every morning, his neck twisting like a snake and gills growing underneath his chin. “I am a man.”

He had no reason to think otherwise, so he never did.

Just the kind of short-short I enjoy -- eerie and out there, yet clicks home on a very interior level. 

lynn

richard this is quite a nice short, love the morbidity of the narrator and the mystery that sets the environment.  in my reading, i had a hard time with "unbridled" ending a sentence. also in the second sentence of the second paragraph, i might edit out some of those "ands", it seems to run on a touch. enjoyed richard -lawrence