A vast stretch of imagination in a bathroom…

As she wound the towel around her back to absorb the moisture, her arms stretched out wide. She looked at them in the bathroom mirror, nearly admiring how taut they were. Not an ounce of excess flesh or flab; pure perfection, she thought contentedly. As her eyes traveled the length of her arm, from her long, tapering fingers to her firm shoulders, a greenish line caught her view. At the junction of the right arm and the shoulder was a maze of green lines. Veins? Not really, she thought. I never had such fine skin before.

As she stared, the vein network grew darker. It began to move underneath her skin. It grew in length, the network broadened. Before her amazed eyes, it spread downward from the upper arm, moving towards her elbow. On the other side, it moved towards her collarbone. As it spread, it became more protuberant. In fact, it appeared to throb with an almost-violent intensity. The color changed from pale-green to darkish green-black and the entire network started wriggling violently under her skin like a gang of worms. As she stared, a faint crack appeared near her shoulder bone. A stream of orange fluid trickled out of the crack. It appeared heavy and unwilling to move. But it resolutely made its way over her shoulder bone and disappeared from view. Another stream appeared, immediately moving downward. It looked as if it was tracing its path along her collarbone before it suddenly slipped underneath and moved towards her right breast. Her entire shoulder trembled with a shudder that chilled her to her very core. As she frantically looked around for a towel to stem the flow of this strange fluid, a sudden spurt from her right eye almost caused her to lurch forward and lose her balance and grab the side of the cabinet for support. The bathroom mirror was splattered with sticky, orange fluid.

She blinked. The mirror was spotless.