Not Titled Yet (standard:adventure, 3396 words)
Author: Spotlight	Added: Apr 08 2002	Views/Reads: 3457/2483	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Just another humorous tale of a man changed into a fox with superpowers and his adventures to save the world from aliens and the government and Native Americans. (Chapters 1 and 2 included)

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

Matt glanced out a four-paned window, to see a visitor trotting into 
his yard.  An orange-haired male kit, to be exact.  And exactly about 
fifteen minutes after he arrived home from work each day, he saw him 
sit in the grass, five, ten feet from the house, and stare, possibly 
begging.  Lately, he had taken to yipping and did so at that moment.  
Matt cut the sandwich into two triangles and left the television to 
buzz silently and invisibly with static while he took a few tentative 
steps through the front door. 

The fox's ears perked, swiveling a bit to the sides then forwards,
swishing its tail from the ground and continuing to trot closer, also 
tentatively.  With practiced patience, Matt bent down to the skinny 
animal and tore a piece of cold sandwich from one of the corner's, 
taking a quick bite himself. 

Matt never had pets, for the same reason most people bought them.  He
saw all those cute puppies in the stores, baying and crying for 
attention, and watched little kids and college students pick and choose 
their favorite, which they then grabbed and took home.  Untempted, he 
wondered why people felt this was some sort of fair way to choose a 
companion.  Maybe it was self-deluded romanticism, or plain insanity, 
but he wanted a pet to choose him.  Yes, it negated the meaning of pet, 
but if there can be star-crossed lovers, can't there be star-crossed... 
animal-human friendships?  Actually, he began to wonder why he could 
come across a star-crossed animal-human friendship, and never even make 
conversation with the opposite sex. 

The fox eyed him carefully, and for the first time in three weeks of
visits, circumvented its daily ritual of cautious precaution and sunk 
its front teeth into the piece without hesitation.  Matt felt a tingle 
all over his body, an alone man's tingle at breaking through some 
imaginary hurdle between him and this "wild" animal.  He felt the small 
pink tongue of the fox slither out to catch some broken crumbs in the 
cracks of his hand.  Quickly, he tore another piece and this time fed 
it directly to the fox's gentle muzzle.  It wagged its tail and for 
once Matt felt special, and it tingled his whole body.  For once 
someone special, whether it was animal or human, someone worth 
communicating with had finally chosen him. 

He would have reflected more on this feeling that country life had
instilled in him, and how this simple gift of love and tenderness from 
a small woodland creature had changed his outlook on the world, but 
once he realized the ground was the one tingling and now tingling very 
violently, his perception changed from love to fear very quickly and he 
would have made a decision to panic if it wasn't for the telephone pole 
which very heavily knocked him unconscious, therefore preventing any 
thought or decisions at all. 

The fox, having slightly sharper reflexes, was able to make two
split-second decisions that will further this story immensely.  The 
first, was to save itself and not be brave, just quick about it.  And 
the second, which is significantly more important, was to stay and 
finish the piece of sandwich instead. 

2 

The sky radiated a beautiful sunset purple that touched the small misty
clouds skimming along the ground between cracked stumps of trees, 
broken limbs, up-turned telephone poles, collapsed double-wide light 
blue trailers with dark green garages, electrical cables without 
electricity, an unconscious Matt, and an empty space of green grass 
where a fox should have been lying.  A silent wind winded alleys of air 
through the wrecked forest, rustling leaves.  Crickets paused.  The few 
living animals listened to their own thumping heartbeats.  Dust created 
piercing streaks of multi-colored light to complete the surreal scene; 
a stained-glass window to nature's reverent church. 

Matt grunted, slipping out of a bad dream.  Doctors had informed him
that he had a strange condition like a twisted ankle, only involving 
his whole body, rightly called a "twisted body".  So they had to 
rehabilitate his back with a huge blue ice pack that took four doctors 
to crack, and tied it around his waist and shoulders.  He could do 
nothing but lie on the ground, drinking orange juice out of a long, 
neon twisty straw.  Matt scratched his head, achingly rubbing his eyes, 
and then tracing the elongation in the center of his face. 

Matt noticed a slight sinus headache and a tinge of pain in his lower
back, trying to combat the panicky feelings that were enveloping his 
mind at the moment.  Elongation.  Hands, two black-furred hands, with 
soft padding on the palms.  Matt crossed his eyes.  Black nose, with 
orange blur.  He attempted to faint, but he had never fainted before.  
Instead, he screamed a girly scream and jumped to his feet. 

"Oh my...!"  He had experienced a similar occurrence before in his
younger years, as a soccer player.  It happened after ripping off his 
shin guards and pulling down the tight, knee-high socks.   When he 
would rub his matted leg hair, all the individual strands pulled like 
needles, electric needles charged with static tugging in the opposite 
direction.  It was self-imposed torture that slowly dissipated, unlike 
the ten-thousand volt, full body acupuncture his fresh coat of fur 
rubbing every direction at once against wet and folded cotton was 
feeling as he finished his scream with some unintelligible utterance 
that began as GAHHHUNGH, and ended in SHUSHHUSSSS, accompanied by 
seizure-like shivers.  He grabbed his shirt, literally ripping the 
material off, feeling claws extended from his fingers cutting hastily 
into the material, shredding the cloth as it flew over his head.  A 
sigh of relief hit him like an orgasm and his body shook again until he 
was standing totally motionless, his jaw still open, his eyes glazed 
over and staring at nothing.  He was panting. 

A full minute later, he remembered his first name and then his last name
and then where he was and the word "shit", which he wanted to say but 
thought, and then interestingly, he was attacked by a simple thought.  
It wasn't that his jeans and boxers had been around his ankles ever 
since he had stood, nor was it the extreme looseness of his boots, both 
of which he acknowledged as strange in their own right.  The thought 
made him bend down to the blue jeans pooled around his ankles and 
skeptically search for the correct pocket.  His claws retreated with 
his calm, slightly surprised movement.  Without hesitation, his left 
hand reached inside the fabric pile and pulled from his back pocket the 
key to the Iroc sitting in his garage. 

For a second, he gazed at the key. 

He wondered when his fainting mechanism would kick in.  He felt his new
tail wag in boredom. 

A lone bird whistled and startled him out of his stupor.  For the first
time, he actually looked at himself.  He was trimmer, slimmer, more 
muscular, the gut was gone and replaced by a white-furred six-pack.  
And the fur all over, a broad white chest, orange to the sides and down 
the legs and up the tail to a dot of white at the tip, black at the 
calves down to the feet, same as the arms, with a white trail opening 
in a strange curling design across the thighs, pointing to...  "No!"  
He vocalized in a panicked octave above.  Where was it?  Taking a deep 
breath, he inspected the new groin area.  One...  Two...  alright.  
There were two of those.  Good.  Now, a small, white, furry, tube-like 
lump with a hole.  Reflexively, he lifted his head and searched the 
woods for any onlookers.  He stopped himself mid-turn and shook his 
head at his own stupidity.  Then, ever so carefully, with teeth 
clenched tight in a grimace, his black digits pried apart the hole, and 
with one eye, he glanced inside.  The second largest sigh of his life 
leaked from his open mouth.  He patted his now hidden little man 
respectfully.  His mind was so relieved by the sight that before his 
brain actually comprehended the exact implications of having lost his 
manhood and gained a foxhood, he had slipped his legs out from the 
tangled mess of jeans and underwear and boots, already admired the 
curve of his calf where black and orange met, and felt the 
mocassin-like padding of his awkward feet/paws against the cool green 
grass, so when the realization that this form was now his form hit him 
like a large telephone pole to the head, panic subsided and the 
confusion gave him a headache. 

He needed some aspirin, especially after he turned for the first time
and noticed his house, or houses, or what could be best described as a 
doublewide, light blue trailer after a giant had mistaken it for a can 
of sardines.  The roof was curled upside-down, half of the dark green 
garage careening through the walls, and littering the kitchen with 
boards like shredded paper strips. 

With a lightness in his step (something that happens when one loses over
30 pounds in the blink of an eye) and the happy jingle of lost car keys 
that he begrudgingly accepted despite his suddenly sullen mood, Matt 
began to survey the damage and search for some Excedrin.  Some swinging 
boards cracked and dropped with his creaking footsteps.  He bit his 
lower lip unconsciously as he spied his computer, his TV, his favorite 
copy of a Salvador Dali painting, and three long butter knives crashed 
together in an amalgamation of shattered glass, metal and plastic, 
arranged exactly like his favorite Salvador Dali painting. 

His refrigerator was OK. 

He remembered pictures of fire disasters, whole houses burnt to a
charcoal black, with the lonely gray refrigerator in the center, 
basically untouched.  And there it stood, by a split counter, 
spotlessly white but no longer humming with life. 

Reaching inside the darkness, he pulled from the butter cabinet a bottle
of Excedrin, then bent to the vegetable crisper to grab a still 
ice-cold generic root beer.  Starfund, or something.  His black fingers 
felt a little stubbier, but the soft padding underneath gripped the 
condensation-covered can easily.  He twisted off the childproof bottle 
top with usual unease, dropping the keys in the process, then prodded 
at the root beer tab with a slippery index finger unable to grip the 
ring.  The headache began to pound his sinuses.  Matt took a deep 
breath, then thought for a second, then calmly attempted to extend a 
claw in his index finger.  He imagined a "shinnngg" sound, but felt a 
small bit of muscle tension in the tip of his finger as a single claw 
about one inch in length slid silently into the air.  Grinning, he 
watched the nail retreat.  "Shing!"  Actually making the sound this 
time with his voice, his hand exploded with five individual claws.  He 
looked down.  "Shing.  Shing.  Shing.  Shing.  Shing.  Shing.  Shing.  
Shing."  His eight toes clicked the kitchen linoleum, from left to 
right.  A new, strangely long and curled smile lifted his cheeks; he 
tap-danced for a minute, playing with the different combinations of 
claw sounds, flexing and relaxing, scraping the floor.  He chuckled, 
then realized the complete silence around him and thought it probably 
wasn't all that funny.  So, with trepidation like a woman afraid of 
breaking a particularly long nail, Matt curled one claw underneath the 
aluminum tab and tugged.  The feeling associated to his finger 
nail/claw is alien to all human beings except possibly to those with 
this horrible fungus that turns the cuticle and all parts of the nail 
this thick, grayish, yellow, green color.  It runs in some families.  
It makes the nail almost four-times as thick.  Anyway, the nail made no 
struggle to bend backwards or break, accepting the pulling force as any 
bone in the hand would, and the root beer can fizzed, frothing over the 
side.  For a second, he stood there, amazed, thinking about rubbing his 
eyes in the morning and accidentally blinding himself, but then he 
remembered the Excedrin on the broken counter, spilling four pills into 
his hand, then his mouth stretched unnaturally to accept the tumbling 
things along his tongue.  When he began to chug the root beer, pursing 
his long lips, the thought that animals lapped at drinks not chugged 
them lingered in his brain until he mentally shrugged his shoulders and 
continued swallowing effortlessly.   Between breaks to pant for breath, 
he practiced shinging and attacked the dismantled counter with claws 
that left vicious horror-movie marks in the plastic.  He needed a 
mirror. 

The bathroom was demolished with sharp scraps of metal, stripped boards,
and collapsed walls with nails and pointy things sticking out in all 
directions.  Even if Matt wanted to search for the shattered mirror in 
this mess, piles of split 4x4's and rusty metal smelling of rain gutter 
sludge blocked the pathway to the room.  He decided a more fruitful 
course of action included twisting open the relatively clean door to 
the garage and possibly finding a rear-view mirror intact. 

Yellow is an interestingly bright color when it shines and glows across
waxed metal, and streaks of multicolored sunlight through dust 
particles falling from the ceiling in visible light swirls, magnify a 
sense of otherworldly beauty that is represented by the gleaming of a 
perfectly preserved Iroc-Z proudly uninjured by the destruction 
surrounding it.  Matt squinted, his eyes vainly attempted to be shocked 
while in this condition.  He wanted his hand holding the root beer can 
to suddenly be stunned and drop it to the floor, but it didn't.  This 
kind of depressed him.  Where was the drama in all this? 

But, the Iroc stoically waited for Matt, who now glanced across the
two-car garage at the metallic-blue truck, then at the driver's side 
door laying neatly beside it.   A support beam had fallen, denting and 
crushing the truck bed, while splinters of wood and chalky white, 
drywall dust littered the slightly rusted cab.  The hood seemed as 
though it had suddenly decided not to exist, the already faulty engine 
now sawdust covered and visible.  Surprisingly, most of the ceiling 
remained intact on that side, while most of the walls, including the 
automatic garage doors, were completely ripped apart. 

Matt truly was filled with a sense of confusion and really wanted to
figure out the cause of his sudden transformation, and the reason 
behind his house being instantly demolished, but took a deep breath 
instead.  This deep breath was soon followed by a look in the side 
mirror of the Iroc.  Matt did not know what to expect, but he did not 
expect to be unsurprised by the face he was now staring at.  Werewolves 
traditionally had angry smiles and grossly exaggerated fangs, a mix of 
human and animal with only the horrific qualities of both.  He was 
staring at a fox face; a cute fox face, he admitted, but he was staring 
at a fox face, black nose, little black patches down the muzzle in 
haphazard designs, white and orange at the cheeks.  Well, his eyes were 
a little different, but really only different cause they were the same, 
and he didn't appear as gainly as the kit, maybe a bit healthier, 
fuller in the face.  His lips were a thin black, and well-cleaned, 
white teeth lined the top and bottom of his mouth. 

Almost disappointed at not having some hideous disfigurement, Matt posed
the question of what to do now. 

Losing interest in that tactic, he made faces at himself in the mirror
for five minutes, giggling. 

-=-=-=-=-Check Back for the continuing story, to be finished slowly but
surely over the course of the next few years.-=-=-=-=- 

by Spotlight 2001-2


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