this passage from the last unicorn is such a concisely evocative piece of body horror, but it also makes me think about how horrifying it would be to go in the opposite direction, from mortality to immortality, or undeath. feeling your body crystallise and become frozen in time, untethered from the relentless but reassuringly constant march of entropy around you. or realising that you've lost something that was always there, but lacking the means to articulate what was taken from you, because you never had any cause to pay it much attention until you noticed its absence.
honestly the arrested development aspect of undeath is the most horrifying one to me. we talk a lot about "coming back wrong" and the way that passing through death prevents you from ever experiencing so many of the things that make life worth living again, but it's the idea of never being able to change, or move forward, or even move at all, that i find truly harrowing. the complete loss of control or purpose, and with the added impact of being forever trapped in a constantly existing reminder of the termination of your life, which is incredibly traumatic no matter how prepared you think you are for it.