Billy awoke one day to find he was still human.
This shouldn't come as a shock to most of us, but he'd bedded down
the night before
like a kid for Christmas morning.
He'd paid good, bad, and mostly clean money
for a bad of magic
and steadily spooned it into himself.
He'd reeled and wailed, giggled and shook
limbs and fingers, tongue and teeth
formed cryptic, crazy angles
as he unraveled and wove himself
into something new.
But he awoke once more, staring at the same craters in his ceiling.
No stronger, no uglier, no freer than he had been.