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Guest Doppelfoxx writes fiction and nonfiction, and last submitted a story about NFTs affecting the culture. This interview with NIIC was dual-submitted to Flayrah. NIIC the Singing Dog is a well known furry musician from Philadelphia, with 5 albums of howling electro-pop and over 7 million views across Youtube, Spotify and other platforms. Fun fact: Patch O’Furr jumped around with his live show at Anthrocon and shared funny reactions from his videos. After a period of low activity, NIIC has new music on the way.

(Doppelfoxx): Welcome and thank you for interviewing with us! Who are you and what do you do? Describe yourself in a few sentences.

Hey hey! My name is Kyle McCarthy, but I’m wayyy better known as N I I C, or NIIC the Singing Dog. I am a furry singer-songwriter-producer from New York City, and my genre is a pop-hybrid of electronic and folk. I write and perform songs, collaborate with other awesome furry artists, and make my own album art and photography when I can!

When did you start having an interest in making music, and what/who gave you the inspiration to start releasing it?

I’ve always loved to make music. Since I was like 6 or whenever, I would hate how a song that I liked would go away. I was a kid and it was the 90s so there wasn’t phones or YouTube or MP3 players, I couldn’t just stream a song immediately or have a collection of CDs around. So I would figure out as much of songs as I could and I would try playing them on an electric piano and tried singing them, this way I could keep them around longer than the radio or a movie. This concept would just keep on rolling onward in my life. I’d pick up guitar, play sax in marching band and sing in drama club, and I’d eventually go to University of the Arts in Philadelphia as a music composer. The idea just kept on evolving. The idea flipped from liking songs I heard and trying to make them eternal, to making songs of my own and making those eternal.

Prior to NIIC (so, University of the Arts), I was working on musicals. I liked the musical route because I could have my own characters and stories ALONG with music, so it was the whole package! I would make worlds and characters and songs for those worlds and characters. Then I would get college mates together to sing and play instruments and record the songs, it was a lot of fun. Right before I moved up to NYC and started NIIC, I worked at a panini-coffee shop and they let me film my puppets in there – I had a web musical show called Sebastian the Singing Cockroach. He’s actually NIIC 1.0 haha. The singing dog used to be a cockroach. But it was a lot of work and not in a way that I felt fulfilled. A lot of fidgeting around with iMovie and the graphics/film editing part.

By the time I moved up to NYC, I was taking internship and gig leads from my professors’ contacts and I was working in music studios while pulling two restaurant jobs. I was overworked, underpaid, and when I actually WAS doing music it wasn’t even MY music, it was other peoples’. That was not for me. Probably a month or two before this revelation, I was scrolling on the internet and started seeing furries and art here and there. I wasn’t active but I was always scrolling through stuff.

When I finally was at my peak of frustration with my life, I said to hell with it all and I just combined the coolest strangest things in my life at the time: my desire to do music my way; my arsenal of music equipment, education, and contacts; and the new element: furries! But different than before, I wouldn’t figure out every dimension of this character right off the bat. I wasn’t going to solve the meaning of life or map out the whole universe. This character would develop over time, he’d grow and shape as his world grew and shaped. At the start, my NIIC character would be some… um dog… green? sure! That… um, yeah… sings electronic pop songs, and um… stuff! Yeah!

What made you introduce the furry element to what you do? Any special moments with the fandom, a special connection, or is it just something that interested you?

NIIC… and I guess in this context the NIIC we’re talking about is really at his core… the Music OF NIIC and all the songs I make for him… NIIC from the get-go was furry, so from the start this was non negotiable. The actual idea that inspired me to really push forward with this furry character came in my initial research. Yes, I was SUCH A NERD about all of this. I studied furries like it was my graduate dissertation. Before I pushed the button on him in March 2013, I spent that WHOLE winter surfing, seeing everyone’s fursonas, looking at artists’ work, trying to find musicians in the fandom too, anything and everything I could absorb to give me a clear of idea of what I was getting into as NIIC as much as possible.

However, finding MUSICIANS was so difficult, especially at the time in 2013. The musicians I did find were DJs, a majority of their content – as awesome as it was – were EDM song remixes, a minority of the DJs actually having original EDM songs. These songs weren’t very furry either. Other musicians I was looking at in the fandom were also skilled, but something I couldn’t seem to find in all of them. Music about furry topics and things. I managed to find a furry musician here or there with actually a furry song or two, but they felt more novelty or just not something I would jam out to. I don’t mean to sound condescending because this was just my opinion, but this shaped the idea that would govern NIIC. I had an idea that I could be the one to add to the thin collection of furry songs for the fandom – by writing epic furry lyrics of my own with high-notch music backing them. This idea really sparked me to push NIIC as much as I could, the idea that I could contribute a ton to Furry Pride in the songs that we were all listening to.

Do you have any influences in mind, favorite artists, that help you develop your style?

My influences have changed as NIIC has become more defined. In the beginning, I needed to manifest him as this pop icon entity in my head, so Ke$ha, Britney, and Karmin were my go-tos. The go-big or go-homes. Overtime, I was able to focus more on the music as I solidified my imagination of his character, and I started diving into inspirations like AJR, Imagine Dragons, Madeon, and Haelstorm. I’m still in the latter phase, to be honest haha. In all of my inspirations, no matter at which point in time, have always been artists who are characters themselves – larger-than-life musicians who have taken on an augmented ‘sona of their own and perpetuating it into epic songs!

I heard that you have a new album in the works! Can you tell us anything about it?

ESCAPE is NIIC’s long awaited next album! Another entourage of high-energy electro-pop, these songs will cut to your core like an unapologetic buzz-saw! An ode to love, a suffocated cry for help, an existential crisis, a tribute to a bodega cat… this album is one giant tribute to the archangel and the monstrosity in all of us. Because the beast in us has been awakened, and instinct will save and will ruin you here. And if you don’t unleash yourself from it all now, there may never be an escape! Those who supported the album during the Kickstarter can watch the songs unfold in their final phases of production on private Youtube livestream! Updates and other announcements are coming soon, too!

Any messages you want to send to people who read this, and anything you want to say about the community as a whole?

The Furry fandom is the purest Pandora’s Box you could ever find. The possibilities are endless, the adventures are countless, the friends and relationships you’ll make are as many as you’re willing to reach out for. I have spent years working to get my life back together and even stronger, to bring NIIC back out from the shadows and even transcend with him father than I ever have before. In my long and brutal search to find how I can truly move forward with myself and NIIC, and discovering what more I can contribute to the fandom, I have found my answer simply by looking at the fandom itself and everything it is. This is a place where anything and everything happens, and depending on the lens we use it can all look bleak and toxic, or it can be seen as a community of acceptable, support and love. The only difference is our perception and what love we put into the fandom. And in a realm where we can be anything, I’d rather be that support and love. We all should be. It is up to us to take care of this fandom, and not just be reactive to it. It is not something we experience, it is an actively evolving story that we are all writing. And it is up to us to make this realm of ours the greatest story of our lives!

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon.Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

F.Y.N.N. The Hologram Fox – Furality mascot by @Spainimation

1980’s furry fans first gathered with room parties at science fiction conventions, until Sylys Sable helped co-found the first convention for furries in 1989. Sy was there from the birth of a worldwide subculture to a new kind of experience with virtual furry conventions today. These offer many of the features of live cons, while accommodating more members across geographic and social isolation. The premiere virtual con, Furality, started in 2020 and soon beat the live furry con attendance record. Sy is the guy to tell us why!

Editor note: Sy submitted his story after the latest Furality event in June 2022, but it was delayed. Since then, a situation with VR as a community (of several platforms) could use explaining. In late July, VRchat implemented a security update that seriously upset their users, causing massive backlash and review-bombing. A statement from the company addressed the situation: cheating and Griefing by malicious users was out of control, and their solution was removal of game modding. But many good-faith users depended on mods, including for accessibility (like for disabilities) and felt their creative work was sabotaged by the update.  

Meanwhile, furries talked about jumping ship to other platforms. A friend of Sy (another old school furry fan and VR user) said that Second Life isn’t officially supporting VR, NeosVR is having a tragic fall from “crypto BS” (a feud between owners, would-be investor control and creators), and ChilloutVR is in “very early days… They are in that scrambling to scale stage.” This makes a cloudy future, but Sy’s story highlights what stands out as the best of the community. 

Furality in the eyes of Sylys Sable.

VR Chat, the free cross-platform virtual reality social multiplayer system has attracted the attention of the furry community… and why not? You can build worlds and create avatars and interact with others as YOU. It’s like a furry meetup/convention that never ends, and everyone has a fursuit (or several)! (with the same limited field of view. How realistic!)

In 2020 some enterprising furry folks decided to create an actual furry convention with VR Chat as the venue. The big difference in their concept was the convention venue would be separate from the open worlds that make up VR Chat. Worlds where any player can show up (public worlds) often attract antisocial types who enjoy irritating others. (Great hobby…) You can create “instances” where only your friends, or their friends can show up, which makes them more private; and you can always block/mute the abusive types. But what these guys wanted to do was create a “virtual” hotel/convention center, with stages, meeting rooms, events and dealer dens. VR Chat was willing to “rent” them space for a limited time, and the team created custom worlds to host the convention. Charging a membership fee, like RL conventions, would cover the costs. Furality was born.

From Danny Grey – a very nicely produced music video from the Furality Community Showcase

This sort of thing was new to VR Chat. How would it be possible to make worlds that only convention members could enter? The VR Chat website could create “invitations” that would show up to VR users that would allow them to jump to that specific instance. There was a problem of scale, however, so the team created their own website, the F.O.X. Portal (Furry Online Xperience) where attendees could view the schedule of events, see a list of the world instances and select one. An invitation would appear in their VR menu and they could jump there. Con-Ops was a Discord channel, where attendees, presenters, dealers and staff could communicate. If this sounds complex to you, you’d be correct. Furality happened, bugs and glitches included. Was the team discouraged? Well their decision was to organize another Furality… 6 months later! So it seems even virtual furry convention organizers tend to be masochistic.

Some furry VRC users complained: why should we pay for something that is free? Other conventions retreated to VR and online venues during the pandemic, including EuroFurence. They created a duplicate of their RL venue, with help from the actual hotel/convention center. It was so accurate that the elevators even broke down occasionally! The EF Online convention happened in open worlds, with events broadcast on Twitch and YouTube, and shown in a VR theater. Griefers were a common problem, however, as other furry conventions that followed the EF example discovered.

Furality 2000 came next. As the Furality team chased down bugs and improved their system, more people realized that their concept was superior to having conventions in open worlds. The Furality worlds were also amazing! Since they were created from scratch for each convention, the theme encompassed the entire design and experience. From beautiful world designs and special effects to original soundtrack music, they had creative control of every aspect of their virtual venue. The retro (Disney?) future of space luxury liners in orbit around Earth, with space-age cocktail lounges and conference rooms with views of space was great fun!

Then came Furality Luma. Since the creative team could literally do anything they could imagine, they decided to go all out and create a new beautiful, mysterious world as their venue. You could customize your avatar to respond to lighting effects in Luma worlds. The opinion of most of the attendees is that they “knocked it out of the park!” Luma attendees know what I’m talking about, and though there are pictures online of the convention, they really don’t do it justice. Luckily you can enjoy a small piece of the Luma world in Fynn’s Room in VR Chat. By this time, the team had added new features to the F.O.X. Portal, including a process to load your friends list from the VR Chat website into the portal so you could join your friends in various event instances. RL furry conventions don’t have this feature. We’re stuck trying to coordinate with our phones and message apps…

Next up: Furality Legends. This convention happened in a super-hero comic! You could customize your avatar to look like they stepped off the pages of a color comic book, and choose to be a hero or a villain. Convention event spaces were also tailored to the good guys and bad guys. The dealers den was the Infinity Mall, a huge glass-roofed shopping mall with a 5 story aquarium as the centerpiece. The (160+) dealers each had a storefront on one of two levels. By this time the furry community had embraced the concept of a virtual convention, and attendance increased. You may think this would be a tough act to follow…

Made this music video for for #FuralityAqua creators showcase and took me ages.

It's a synthwave Max Headroom video for the amazing @decobanduk's cover of Bittersweet Symphony.

It took me ages. #VrChat #Furry #Furality #VrFurry #Vtubers pic.twitter.com/wDn6mTcBmu

— Changa Husky (@Changa_Husky) June 19, 2022

Furality Aqua: Of all the previous Furality conventions, the beautiful, mysterious, glowing world of Luma remained a favorite of attendees and the creative team. At the closing ceremonies of Legends, a short teaser video introduced Furality: Oceans of Luma. Attendees were once again blown away by the images of underwater views of Luma. Anticipation was high. At Furry Weekend Atlanta (and Biggest Little Fur Con), the Furality team set up a two-way portal for RL convention members to see and speak to furs in VR Chat visiting the Luma world in Fynn’s Room. Then on the night of June 16th 2022, starting with DJ sets in Club Fynn, Furality Aqua began, and it was Amazing! Over the weekend over 15,000 registered members enjoyed presentations, concerts, meetups and nearly round-the-clock DJ sets, all in a beautiful underwater world. You could customize your avatar, adding translucent wings, fins and flippers, and even small sea creature companions. The F.O.X. portal worked nearly flawlessly, so getting to events and finding your friends was easier than ever. Of course, just like RL conventions, there will be many that suffer from Post Con Depression. It’s another aspect the VR conventions share with the RL ones.

So, after some rough spots and learning experiences over a few years (I still can’t believe that they did this twice a year!), it seems that the furry community embraced the idea of virtual furry conventions. They just have to be run well, and fun! Chuck Jones, the WB animator once said “Animation takes a lot of work, and a lot of love. In the end, only the love should show”. It was obvious that the creative and technical team of Furality really loved what they do! Furality Aqua raised over $20,000 for their Save A Fox charity, and had over 15,000 registered attendees, making Furality the largest furry convention ever!

– Sy Sable

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon.Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

The Best Furry Dating Services You Should Try Xege Kheiru, Writer, Furry

22 Aug 2022

Why Should I Use A Furry Dating Service? 

Finding love in the 21st century feels like it’s getting harder day by day, meeting new people is becoming less and less common as online dating has eliminated the need to even do so, social anxiety is at an all time high and the world is ending, but hey that’s not what we’re here for. Dating is even harder for furries as, believe it or not, a lot of people aren’t super accepting of the fandom meaning that a lot of furries end up just dating other furries to save them the trouble of essentially coming out as a furry to their partner. 

So, with the introduction of furry dating services in the past few years, finding love for furries has become so much easier that it’s hard to imagine trying to date without it.

Is It The Same As All Online Dating 

 

A lot of the following services operate on the same basis as pretty much any dating site and that is you see a profile of a person that you like, you send them a like and if they like you back, well, you just found yourself a match. Of course this has been adapted in the modern-day into an addictive swipe-fest that suckers you out of all of your money on infinite swipes, increased match chances and super likes galore. However, furry dating services seem less predatory than a lot of the biggest dating sites right now. 

 

So, without further ado let’s get into the list!

 

Starfox 64 Game Cover

Image by wikifur.com

Furfling.com   

Let’s kick this off with Furfling. We’re going to get this out of the way now if it wasn’t already obvious but all users must be 18 or over to use this or any other service on the list below. With that aside, if you’ve looked into furry dating before, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of furfling.com considering its launch in 2012. As of 2018 it had around 125,000 active users which may not sound like a lot for a dating service, but when you consider how small and niche the furry community is already, it’s no surprise that the membership is so small. 

 

While they may not be as sleek as most modern dating services, they compensate for this with functionality and accessibility. Furfling offers its users a search function, a private messaging area, a contact organizer, a “wink” system which works like super likes on most dating services and a plethora of other features.

Ferzu Banner Art

Image by ferzu.com

Ferzu  

Ferzu is an awesome service for those of you looking to find love on the go. While they also have a web app, its mobile app is where it truly shines. Ferzu is one of the newer furry dating services starting in 2017 out there so it’s definitely worth a look. For one it’s got a thriving community making finding profiles is no challenge at all. It also rocks that sleek modern dating service look, making navigation and usability completely fluid. But its web app isn’t half-bad either, it seems to be more catered for the messaging side of things although, this is no problem at all as it is still great anyway.

Reddit Logo

Image by Reddit

r/r4rFurry Subreddit  

This one is kind of cheating but we’re going to use it because reliable furry dating services are few and far between. So, if the prior two services don’t tickle your fancy very much, you could definitely check out this subreddit. It works like this, you make a post, almost like a profile, explaining a little bit about yourself, your fursona, your dating situation and what you’re looking for in terms of dating. Then, you sit with your fingers crossed that someone replies. You have to remember that this is a little bit more saturated or rather overwhelming than most furry dating services as rather than presenting you with one option at a time, you have a whole wall of options placed in front of you that you have to skim through. So, chances are you won’t get a reply for days sometimes weeks, but when you do, there’s a good chance that something can come of it. 

 

Of course users should be a lot more cautious when using Reddit as a means of meeting people as that is not what Reddit is designed for and therefore catfishing and users with malicious intent can use the site with little to no moderation.

What To Avoid In Furry Dating

 

A lot of these rules will apply to general dating but it’s important that you stay safe when meeting up with people you meet on the internet. For one, if you are skeptical of somebody’s profile and you just don’t quite buy who they are you can simply reverse image search whatever picture they are claiming to be themselves and that should somewhat answer your question as to who this person really is. 

 

Also, if you’ve watched any furry video on YouTube (and I mean any, these guys literally take up all of the ad space on the furry side of Youtube) there’s a good chance you’ve heard of FurryMate which as you might have noticed we didn’t feature on this list. That’s because FurryMate is a bit of a shady service in the sense that it allegedly uses bot replies to lure its users into repeat memberships which will automatically activate if you don’t cancel your trial subscription. For more information on it we highly recommend you check out this video which breaks it all down. 

The reason this list is so scarce is because furry dating sites for some reason have a history of slipping into some sort of controversy and inevitably getting taken down or shutting themselves down. Pounced.org, one of the biggest furry dating sites at one point ended up shutting down in 2018 due to some sex trafficking act. Not to mention other services like Howlr shutting down literally this year following a controversy with the owner.

 

 

The post The Best Furry Dating Services You Should Try appeared first on Fursonafy.

On Aug 17, 2022, SE Asia’s first furry news channel Global Furry Television (GFTV) marked its 8th birthday. The past year was marked with challenges both to the furry community and GFTV. But they both emerged strong so far – hence why this year’s theme is “Connected In Unity”. GFTV’s eighth-anniversary logo represents a diversity […]

Small but Growing, the Future Is Bright for Vietnamese Furries! Feat. Kusu and Bio [FABP E24]. ---- Welcome to another episode of the Fox and Burger Podcast! In this episode, we interviewed two Vietnamese furries, Kusu and Bio, to talk to us more about furries in Vietnam. Kusu, an artist, is a blue wolf and Bio, a fursuiter/fursuit maker, is husky. Both of them have been on our list for an extremely long time, so we’re excited to finally have a chance to talk to him in this episode. Bonus points: order some Vietnamese food as you watch this episode! ---- Timestamps 00:00 Podcast intro 00:00 Section 1: Introduction 02:49 Guest introduction 05:37 Section 2: Guest Spotlight, Art and Fursuit Making 05:45 What got you into art? 07:48 How popular are doujinshis in Vietnam? 09:35 Do you plan on publishing your doujins in print? 11:42 Best advice for new artists? 12:38 How did you get into fursuit making? 13:48 Where do you buy your fur? 15:13 Do you have any fursuit making senpais? 16:47 Does Vietnam have any animals that are unique to Vietnam? 18:13 Overall, do Vietnamese fursuit makers take more inspiration from Asia or from the West? 20:12 What other unique challenges do you face Vietnam in regards to fursuit making? 21:39 Section 3: Comparing and Contrasting Fandoms 21:45 How would you describe Vietnamese furries? 25:36 Why are Vietnamese not as visible in fandom? 29:07 How often do furries meet up (before COVID)? 31:27 Will there be a Vietnamese furry convention anytime soon? 38:38 Social media shout out and outro ---- Social Media: Official FABP Twitter: https://twitter.com/foxandburger Michael: https://twitter.com/foxnakh https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK9xoFQrxFTNPMjmXfUg2cg Burger: https://twitter.com/L1ghtningRunner http://www.youtube.com/c/LightningRunner Kusu: https://twitter.com/x_Kusunagi_x https://www.facebook.com/KusunagiArt Bio: https://twitter.com/BioHusky13 https://www.facebook.com/bio.hoangda ---- Footage Credit: https://matrices.net/ https://sgfurs.com/2015/12/23/sg-furs-at-furs-upon-malaysia-furum-2015/ https://www.furaffinity.net/view/43319075/ http://costumecon39.org/2020/01/21/further-confusion-2020/ https://www.tripsavvy.com/disneyland-and-california-adventure-best-rides-3225803 https://www.cbr.com/nostalgia-punch-the-15-best-hanna-barbera-cartoons-ranked/ https://www.deviantart.com/rouzille/art/Onepunchman-x-RWBY-How-to-get-Stronger-570387316 https://www.yyzzbaby.com/statuses/12335542.html https://www.yyzzbaby.com/statuses/11565290.html https://www.yyzzbaby.com/statuses/10637690.html https://www.yyzzbaby.com/statuses/12335511.html https://rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/duesseldorf/manga-convention-dokomi-2017-in-duesseldorf_bid-20952269 https://www.no-xice.com/album/paris-manga-13/ https://www.weasyl.com/~skychaser/submissions/1198431/kirin https://www.matrices.net/tutorials.htm https://pupdates.matrices.net/post/151035616279/furring https://twitter.com/BusCaptainDrgn/status/1012756930303913984 https://logos-world.net/deviantart-logo/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z20pEmSdig0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBdrgGJsCJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK1YxxS4SMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBp7OxscfZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgr9szzN0_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLYKCOnrRoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VULqRSR2EUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiYqhRb_veg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uh3aEOgBpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpYzSOIw__k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-1KVvMxwEo Other pictures and video provided by Kusu, Bio, Pixabay, and hosts' personal footage. Intro/Outro Music: Aioli by Andrew Langdon. ---- The Fox and Burger Podcast is one segment of our production house, Fox and Burger Productions. The podcast’s goal is twofold: 1, to know more about the Asian furry fandom; and 2, compare and contrast the Asian and Western furry fandoms. If you have a guest that you would like to see on the show, please PM us! We will also take questions for our guests, so don’t miss this opportunity to know some amazing furs.

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Moobarkfluff!   Rayne sits in with us this week. Bearly shares a camp song from his youth. We learn so much. The CEU Bell is getting worn out.  Come learn with us this week about big words and little maths. Listening to this episode will make you smarter! We guarantee it!Moobarkfluff! 

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Bearly Furcasting S3E17 - The Past repast, Stupid Things, Mathy Tidbits

We really need to get caught up on our YouTube phenoms. We found this at Animation World Network: “Guru Studio is ramping up production on Moonbug Entertainment’s newest CG animated series based on their popular YouTube hit, My Magic Pet Morphle… The show follows Mila and her stepbrother, Jordie, as they leap into a world of adventure with the help of Morphle, Mila’s magical and loyal pet, who has the power to change into whatever she needs.” Morphle is scheduled to hit Disney + and Disney Junior in 2024.

image c. 2022 Moonbug Entertainment

Recently we came across this at Cartoon Brew: “Tubi, a division of Fox Entertainment, adds to its growing roster of adult-focused animation with Breaking Bear, a new animal-based mobster parody series created by Julien Nitzberg… The show, described as Yogi-Bear-meets-The-Sopranos, follows the escapades of three bear siblings who decide they have to start selling drugs in order to raise money and save their home after gas companies start fracking next to their cave. The bears soon enlist other forest animals in a scheme that will pit them against oil companies, The Russian Mafia, local Hell’s Angels, and polar bears who hate anything that isn’t white.” Oh is that all? Well…

image c. 2022 Tubi

Papabear,
​
I began dabbling in the furry fandom when I was 19, and in college (early 2014ish). I went to a small college, and I didn't know a whole lot of furries (though I did know a lot of bronies), so I hung around with other furries on the internet. I have never been to a convention, though I've always wanted to go, but didn't have the money, the opportunity, nor my parents's approval. I have never owned a fursuit (the closest thing to one I owned was a Kigurumi until I donated it due to my parents continuously mocking me over it). Then, I got a really nice engineering job in Jacksonville. I thought I was set, and could participate in conventions, meet actual furries in real life, not just behind a screen, maybe acquire a fursuit. But due to the sensitivity of the job, I had to undergo an extensive, and highly intrusive "background investigation" (i.e. list every social media post, alias or "identity" I have ever held, credit card history, list people I was close with, etc.). I panicked. I wasn't sure if my association with the furry fandom, let alone having a secret fursona, was going to be a liability, or even prevent me from holding the job. In a frenzy, I shut down every furry/fursona-related account I had and disappeared off the internet, I didn't even tell anyone why.

Many years have passed, and I managed to make normal friends IRL (still single though). And to this day, no one in my current circle of friends knows about my past furry life. Making it more complicated is the fact that most of the people I know have a very net-negative view of furries (one of them even jokes about how he used to bully furries on 4Chan). But that is a separate issue. I want to meet people who share my interest in furry stuff. And now that the social stigma around furries has (sort-of) lightened, and become more mainstream, I figured I want to get back into it.

Over the past few months, I started to contemplate jumping back in to the fandom, and find people who actually share my hobbies and enthusiasm, but it has been years. Everyone I knew before online has run off. Most of the furry groups in this state are now defunct, save for Megaplex and maybe Gainesville Furs. And most of the surviving groups seem to be geared towards much, much younger (just barely out of high-school) furries. I want to create a new local-ish group to meet, but I'm afraid no one in the fandom even knows me, and I have no clue what a good furry meet would even look like. Is there a way for me to start over, despite being out of it for so long and jumping in kind of late? Or has my time passed and I should just close the door?

Tactical Furball (age 27),

* * *

Dear Tactical Furball,

The past is the past and is, often, best left there. My advice to you would be to start anew as if you had never before dabbled in the fandom. You don't have to change your fursona name if you don't want to, but just start creating accounts on various social media and gaming (if you like) sites, reintroduce yourself and have fun. If someone recognizes you from the past, simply explain what happened and that you are coming back to the fandom. Most furries will understand the circumstances that led to your earlier decision to leave and will be glad you returned.

As for furmeets and running them, they can be whatever you like them to be. I would suggest setting up a page on MeetUp.com and see if you can attract some interest there. Meetups can be anything from movie or game night at your place to bowling or bar meets (for the older furs), going to parks or beaches or the lake or camping. Whatever you wish. 

If you like, I invite you to join my Facebook Greymuzzle group. Over 2,000 greymuzzles there, and I'm sure you'll meet some in your state if not more locally. (Remember to answer the questions to join or you won't be allowed into this closed group).

Finally, as for your coworkers and nonfurry friends, that goes on a case-by-case basis. You should know your friends well enough to figure out which ones are cool and which ones (like that guy who torments furries online--you should dump him) are not. Tell the ones who are cool and don't tell the ones who are butt munches.

Sound good?

Stay furry!

Hugs,
Papabear

TigerTails Radio Season 14 Episode 04. Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf For a full preview of events and for previous episodes, please visit http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Welcome to Issue 15 of Zooscape!

One year on my birthday, the devilishly smart orange tabby who was my best friend during childhood managed to sneak a dead bird into the house. He left it in front of my bedroom door as an offering.

This is part of the modern mythology of cats — they kill small birds and rodents, especially mice, and bring them to their people as offerings. Cats value dead mice, so that’s what they offer as gifts. From a cat’s perspective, a dead mouse is the best possible gift you can get. Cats, mice, mythology.

I have always related heavily to cats. In the language of the furry fandom, I suppose, my fursona is a cat. There’s no barrier to claiming a fursona. If you imagine some kind of animal version of yourself — go ahead; close your eyes; pick an animal, and do it, real quick, right now — then there you go. That’s your fursona. Or one of them anyway. You can have as many as you want. You can get really serious about them and commission art or even a fursuit to wear. You can write a story about your life as that animal. Or you can just daydream fitfully about having tabby striped fur and lazing in the sun all day. The furry fandom is a really flexible place that way.

At any rate, this year in anticipation of my birthday, I bring the readers of the world a collection of stories about cats, mice, and mythology. These are the things I value. This is my dead mouse. Maybe there are some other cats out there who will value it too.

* * *

The Best Way to Procure Breakfast by Dana Vickerson

The Sacrificial Mouse by Divyasri Krishnan

Cat and Mouse by Gabriel Robinson

The Analogue Cat by Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden

Ghosts by Searska GreyRaven

What They Serve in Valhalla by David Sklar

Drakopegasus by Jack Adam

Mooncalf by Anna Madden

* * *

As always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.

by Jack Adam

“Her lineage includes destroyers of kingdoms, hoarders of treasures, and yes, a few swallowers of men.”

Our drakopegasus rarely bites. And almost never in anger.

She tries to breathe fire, but struggles when she’s high. Thin air up there.

It’s difficult to always know what she wants, while she seems to understand me just fine. I was always simple, resistant to change, predictable. She, however, is complex, a myriad of feelings, notions as wide as the sea.

Her lineage includes destroyers of kingdoms, hoarders of treasures, and yes, a few swallowers of men.

I don’t know where I came from, and Perseus won’t tell me. I’d like to think heroic steeds. Maybe even Unicorns.

Legends describe her mother as a monstrous beast as big as a ship. Granted, she could stop a ship dead, had she the impetus. She was lovely. Slender features, waving mane, the long split tail.

She would never have eaten the princess.

“Perseus,” I said sternly, “free the damsel, while I deal with this… creature.”

I had never asked him for anything. Until later that day.

“I beg you, friend, tell the king and queen their ‘sea-bitch’ is dead.”

For at sunrise, I stood between her and the humans. Her form crested the waves, and her flowing mane whipped up sea foam against the sun.

“Kali mera, Mistress,” I said, nerves making my wings tremor, hovering just over the water.

“You are not of the sea,” she said.

“No…”

“Nor of land… it would seem.”

Times past, I had known mares, phoenixes, a sphynx, once… only Kētos saw me immediately.

“Your hair tells me you’re not of the ocean,” I said, feigning boldness. “And your tail is not of the land.”

She spread dark wings and lifted out of the sea. Golden stars dripped from her body. She floated without a quake, steady as a thundercloud.

We belong to the air.

* * *

“Let me give you some advice, old friend,” said Perseus one day. “When you find your better half, you don’t know immediately. It takes time, it grows gently, like a tree. But it lasts. The love between my lady and I was forbidden. Forbidden… but inevitable.”

“But you see,” I said, forlorn and laid flat, “I felt fated to her the very moment she spoke. Malaka! Surely I misheard the fates.”

And looking into his eyes I said, “She knew me, Perseus. More than even you ever could.”

“Then it is done,” spoke the Queen, Andromeda. “Go to her, Pegasus. The sea beats the rock senseless, but a wave turns with ease.”

Wise words, and she would know. For in the faces of the fates, she showed no fear, no quiver. She was a wave in the night, dark and naked against immovable rock. Her chains—seaweed. Bonds to be broken. Freedom deferred, though never lost.

And she loved Perseus, and all their days they defied the fates, with every kind word and caress. Every smile, every kiss. Zeus and Hera, envious upon Olympus.

* * *

Our little drakopegasus rarely bites. When she does, it is only in play.

We belong to the air.

She belongs to the stars.

And she reminds me of you.

 

* * *

About the Author

Jack Adam loves to imagine colorful worlds populated by relatable characters. Despite a degree in filmmaking, he often gets distracted by other creative endeavors, ranging from music to doodling. When he isn’t making art with his loving family, he prefers to be outside, where Nature breathes of the Divine, and a hammock swing works wonders for the soul.

by David Sklar

“When the butchers killed Lazarus, they knew something was wrong. I saw in their faces how his squeals pierced their hearts. But not one of them acknowledged how they felt.”

It’s such a nuisance, dying every day. Being eaten every day by the same rough men. You may not know this, but my body is still me, even when it’s meat. So I feel the passage of my roasted flesh through their intestines. The battle sweat isn’t so sexy, once you’ve spent time in a person’s gut. But you get to know a man that way, in a way no one else does. I’ve been in the warriors of Valhalla, every one. I’m in them still, becoming part of them.

It’s a hassle, being resurrected every day. Remembering, even after I have been eaten, what form to take when my nephew waves his hammer over my bones.

It’s not the same every day, you understand. And I must remember, every time, how much to change. A spot here, a bristle there. A slightly different wrinkle on my snout. Knowing what the mortal beast will look like when I’m done. Too much, and someone will notice. Too little, I’ve wasted a day.

The first time I tried this, I took too long. The pig was dead of age before I looked enough like him, and I had to walk myself back until I resembled Sæhrímnir again. After that, I practiced on farms in Midgard for a hundred years, learning how much I could alter before anyone mentioned the change. Some things are worth working for, you know — not many, but some. When I could get it done in half a decade, I tried again.

I stole a piglet from a farm on Sable Island. I named him Lazarus, or maybe Lemenkainen, and I looked into his eye and saw the pig he would grow up to be. Then I shrunk him to a size that would fit in a jar the size of my finger, and I sneaked into Valhalla by the cooks’ entrance, with the pig in my pocket.

I hid the piglet in the jar underneath the scullery floor where the scraps were thrown out, where he would have a constant source of food. Then I went to the barn and found Sæhrímnir, the pig they serve in Valhalla every day.

I’d brought another jar with me, for I had planned to hide Sæhrímnir beneath the earth, but when I looked into his eyes I saw the piglet he had been, and I listened to the thoughts he chose to share.

Have you come to kill me? he asked.

I shook my head.

They always kill me, said the pig. They kill me every day.

And you want to live? I asked.

I am tired, Sæhrímnir said. I do not fear death. But I’m tired of dying.

So I became a flea behind his ear. And I whispered of the peace beyond the grave.

That’s nonsense, he said. We’re in the choicest nether real estate, and all the humans do all day is fight.

It was no use to lie any more. The power of a lie, you know, is that people want to believe. Without that, it’s no fun. So I said nothing, but waited with him for the slaughter.

I drank just a bit of his blood — I was a flea, after all. And when they skinned him and lowered him into the cauldron I hopped onto the cook’s apron and waited there.

As the warriors at the long table discarded the bones, I slipped into the pile. And, when my nephew swung his hammer over me, I made myself the pig around the bones.

I carried the bones in my belly, and in the night, while they slept, I returned to the kitchen. I split my belly open with the boning knife, and left Sæhrímnir’s bones in the fire pit.

And every day I let them kill and eat me.

In all the time I dwelt there, they never noticed, but for once, when my brother, the all-knowing, with the one all-seeing eye, brought his horse to the barn there for shelter while the stables were being cleaned.

My brother didn’t recognize me — but his horse did.

Mother? said the stallion.

Shh, said I.

He’s good, my boy. He listened. After my brother had left, I asked my foal, Is your uncle treating you well?

He is a good master, Sleipnir said.

A master? I stammered. He’s your grandfather.

He is a man, said Sleipnir. I am a horse.

I looked my son in the eye and said, You’re smarter than your cousin, but I never put a saddle on him.

This is how it is.

From what I could tell, he believed it. No, I told him. This is about me.

About you? he asked.

Your uncle would rather not think of me as a mare — as a female of any species.

Why not? asked the horse.

Because I was born with a dick between my legs.

And now you’re a woman?

No, at this moment I’m a hog. Try to keep up. But when I finish here I might be a woman, or a man, or a sexless amoeba, and your all-knowing, all-seeing uncle has no place in his taxonomy for that.

He’s unhappy because you’re transgender? Sleipnir asked.

Transgender? I scoffed. Honey, I transcend gender.

Oh.

So we good? I asked.

What became of Sæhrímnir?

I let him rest.

You mean… my son began, and then trailed off.

It is what he wanted, I said.

My son did not respond.

So are we good? I asked.

Tell me again about my father, Sleipnir said.

Of course, I told him. Your father was a splendid beast, a magnificent work horse. Now, me, I’ve never had much use for work, but he wore it well. He helped his master build these walls — not the stable walls, but the walls around all of Valhalla. But for payment he wanted the sun and the moon. And Aunt Freyja. So your uncles sent me to throw him off, so he wouldn’t finish. The craftsman was single-minded, and nothing I did could distract him. But your father was a horse of another color. He broke through his harness, at the sight of a beautiful mare in heat. And I fancied him anyway…

And I told Sleipnir stories until he slept. By the end, I’d regrown udders and ovaries — the maternal instinct is strong, and I still see the suckling foal he was, even now that he’s grown. I decided to leave them there until morning, and I almost got found out when the butcher’s assistant came to my stall.

* * *

When at last the pig that I became looked like the pig I’d brought, I crept into the scullery while they slept, and I opened the jar to let Lazarus out. Even fully grown, he was tiny compared to Sæhrímnir. I made him vast enough to feed an army, and I became the flea behind his ear. I’m sorry, I told him. But he was a mortal beast, born to die and be devoured. If he understood me, he did not show it. If he answered me, I did not understand.

* * *

When the butchers killed Lazarus, they knew something was wrong. I saw in their faces how his squeals pierced their hearts. But not one of them acknowledged how they felt.

When the warriors ate the meat, they called for more. And when he was mostly gone, they squabbled over what remained — with words and grabbing hands, and then with swords. When they were done fighting, the victors devoured the scraps, and the losers picked up their severed limbs and heads, and they put themselves together, like they do every day after sparring.

When my nephew waved his hammer over the bones… well, nothing happened. That was the point.

No one noticed, not at first, but him. He swung the hammer once again, but nothing happened still.

When he swung it a third time, lightning crackled throughout the hall. But the bones did not move.

The men began to notice then, and to gather around, and watch. He swung the hammer, but to no avail. And he thundered, and he hurricaned, and it rained within the hall. But the bones did not move.

And the warriors standing by began to wail. One wept. And then another. And one more. Until the longhouse filled with keening, and the rain flowed from the eaves.

My brother came to the hall and demanded they stop. “What is this ruckus?” he bellowed.

“I will never eat that meat again,” said one of the men.

“You are warriors!” my brother shouted. “Not sheltered schoolgirls! Are you so weak that you weep for a slaughtered pig?”

“We swear, we chose better than this, Allfather,” Toothgrinder the Valkyrie told him.

“They were heroes when we brought them to this hall,” Shieldscraper added, throwing a flagon of mead at the back of a warrior’s head. “Shape up, Ulfric.”

In the form of a sparrow I flew to my brother, and stopped before his face and retook my own shape.

“Loki!” my nephew thundered. “You did this!”

“Of course,” said I, smiling over my shoulder — though I was stiff from having been a pig so long.

And my brother, the all-knowing, asked me, “Why?”

“Look at the warriors of Valhalla,” I answered him, gesturing with one hand to encompass those who had gathered there. “You thought to build an unbeatable army, to train them for thousands of years. And you know your shieldmaidens chose them well. But on your training fields, you banished death. And you provided for their every need. So when they strike each other down, they do not see the pleading eyes of a life snuffed out too soon, but a comrade who will repay them the blow the next day. They might as well be playing a video game.”

“What is a video game?” my brother asked.

“You are out of touch,” I told him, and I turned to walk out of the hall.

My nephew flung his hammer at my head, but I knew he would, so I stood ten feet to the left of where he saw me — his hammer, which always struck true, smashed a hole through the Long Hall’s wall, and I only felt the lightning singe my beard.

I approached the door, but the Valkyrie Shieldscraper barred my way.

“Why did you do this?” she asked me.

“I already answered that,” I told her.

“No,” said Toothgrinder. “You didn’t.”

“But—” I protested.

“The truth,” Shieldscraper demanded.

“I like the world,” I told the Valkyries. “I don’t want it to end.”

“And?” Toothgrinder asked me.

I started to answer, but Shieldscraper gave me that look, the way she does.

“It’s about your nephew, isn’t it?” Toothgrinder said.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s all about him. Everything’s always about him. ‘Why can’t you be like Thor?’ people always ask. Like a brute who thinks a big hammer is the solution to every problem, and people think he’s great and I’m dirt. He even has his own comic book in Midgard.”

“I do?” my nephew asked.

“What’s a comic book?” asked my brother.

“And him,” I said, cutting the air with my hand in my brother’s direction. “I brought him his nephew. I told him, ‘Here is Sleipnir, flesh of my flesh.’ And he gazed on my son admiringly and said, ‘He’ll make a fine steed.’ Who does that?” My fists clenched at my side. “Who the fuck does that, bro?” I shouted at him.

My all-knowing brother had no words.

I stepped out of the deluge in the hall, to the dry outside, and the Valkyries did not bar my way, not any more.

Sleipnir stood there, tied, not far from the hole in the wall. “You should not be tethered,” I told him, and the reins obeyed my words and unlashed from the post. But he stood there, obedient to my father. Where are you going? he asked. Not an accusation, though he had a right. He wanted to know.

I said, “Perhaps I’ll be a woman for a while, and work in an office. They do that now. And they don’t have to tie their hair in front like a beard to fool my brother.”

He cocked his head. Really?

“I don’t know,” I said. I laughed. It’s weird, not knowing — having a moment’s leisure not to have a scheme. “I love this world,” I told him. “All that absurdity. The chaos and all those who live in it. But our family would be content to let it burn.” I really do like this world, you understand, whatever other reasons I have for what I do.

He stood there, impassive.

“You could come with me,” I told him.

He shook his head — not the wild way horses do, but a slow side to side like a man.

“You are the son of a god,” I told him. “You can do anything you want. Don’t waste your time preparing for a war no one can win.”

He gave me a home, Sleipnir answered. Something you couldn’t do.

“He made you a slave,” I said.

He is a good master, Sleipnir replied.

“You don’t need a master!” I told him. “You’re my son! You should bow to no one.”

How’s that working for you? he asked.

I raised my hand without thinking, and he flinched like an animal would. When I stayed my hand he turned to face me again, to look me in the eye. There is war in you too, he told me.

“Come with me,” I implored him.

I’d rather stay here.

I turned and walked away, down the bridge of the Northern Lights. Although the storm was only in the hall, my cheeks were wet. I felt stupid, weeping then, for my boy, who had a home and a life he chose, when I had not shed a tear for Lazarus, or for Sæhrímnir — or for everyone who stands to die if the men of Valhalla regain their taste for havoc. I cried for none of them, but I wept for him.

 

* * *

About the Author

David Sklar lives in New Jersey with 2 kids, 2 cats, and 1 spouse, in a house that has been remade repeatedly for almost a century on its stone foundation on the side of a hill. His published works include fiction in Nightmare and Strange Horizons, poetry in Ladybug and Stone Telling, and humor in Knights of The Dinner Table and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. The guest in the author photo is Beanie, who passed in October of 2021 after a very good and loving life. You can find more about David at davidsklar.blue, and his cartoon Poetry Crisis Line at poetrycrisis.org

by Searska GreyRaven

“My stereo would randomly turn on at full blast with deranged yowling. It was as if the longer my relationship with Deanne went, the stronger and angrier the spectre of my father became.”

The street lights were just flicking on as I walked up the sidewalk toward a dimly lit industrial building. Well, dimly lit for a human. My feline eyes had no problem with it. I reached the entrance and hesitated, one paw clutching a thermal bag while the other hovered over a faintly glowing doorbell. I tried to take a slow, even breath. It came in ragged and left even worse. Damn it, I had it bad. Cats are supposed to be aloof.

I was anything but aloof.

You can do this, Cal. Breathe. Just ask her. The worst she can do is say no, right?

One hand-tossed anchovy and mushroom pizza, which is also how I like my pizza, and maybe sometime, if you’re available and you, you know, swing my way, we could split one together?

Even in my head, that sounded lame.

“God, I’m bad at this,” I muttered. My breath fogged the air, reminding me that the pizza in my arm wasn’t getting any warmer and I needed to quit stalling.

I tapped the buzzer.

A speaker near the door flicked on. “Hello?”

My heart skipped a beat. It was her. I mean, I knew it was probably going to be her, but another guy, a human, would sometimes answer the bell. But there were always two pizzas when that happened. Just one pizza tonight.

“Fantasma Pizza delivery,” I announced brightly.

“Oh awesome. I’ll be right down.” The speaker clicked off.

I waited a few minutes in silence, trying to slow my heart to a reasonable speed. My ears flattened anxiously and it was a struggle to get them to stand back upright. From the other side of the door came the stutter of footsteps and a sudden metallic clatter. The door knob twisted and suddenly, there she was. The most beautiful neko-form I’d ever seen. Sleek black fur covered her from head to toe, her whiskers were long and bowed, and her tail was long and tipped with only a small patch of white.

I stood straighter and held out the box I was carrying. A pair of green eyes studied me and my box for a moment, glittering hungrily. She took the box between her paws, claws scraping the cardboard, and grinned. Her lab coat fluttered as she shifted the box to one hand so she could reach into her pocket. Her paw pads are pink. Perfect seashell pink. They looked chafed, though. I wondered if it was just winter, or maybe whatever her current lab project was making her paw pads chap like that.

“That was really fast. You’re quicker than the sub place!” she said, pulling a pen from her pocket as well as a few carefully folded bills.

Her lab coat rustled closed, sending a zephyr of scent across my nose. Gods, she smelled like coconut and honey and something else. Jojoba? I swallowed back the urge to inhale deeper. Not polite to flehman at customers, no matter how lovely they smell. My hands clenched as I resisted the urge to smooth my fur. There was nothing sleek or sinuous about me. I was all wiry limbs, scruffy pale fur, and mis-matched eyes. I barely passed as feminine most days. It didn’t help that, as a neko-form, I lacked a few of the very obvious characteristics of a human female, like breasts. Don’t ask me why. I’m a pizza delivery girl, not a geneticist.

Say something, Cal! She’s talking to you!

“It, uhh, it was a slow night,” I replied lamely. So lame. I am so lame.

“I didn’t think pizza places had slow Friday nights,” she said, sounding amused. That feline grin widened and I swallowed. My heart was making a fantastic effort to pound straight through my ribs.

“We, ahh, also prioritize regulars,” I lied.

She laughed. She had a wonderful laugh. Jellicle cats, as a certain T. S. Eliot said, are merry and bright, and she was no exception. “I appreciate it. My experiments are at a critical stage, and I can’t leave. And I can’t leave Michael alone too long with my work. He’s a good test-tube jockey, but he’s no scientist.”

She scribbled a signature on the receipt slip and handed it back to me, along with tip money. The scrawling signature was almost illegible, but I knew who she was. Deanne Novak, scientist, inventor, and, I suspected, half angel. No mere mortal had eyes like that. Even for a jellicle, she had striking eyes. “Michael? Fellow scientist?” I asked. “Intern? Boyfriend?” I mentally kicked myself. Smooth, Cal, real smooth.

She snorted. “Intern. Definitely professional only. Ugh, no, I couldn’t stand to date him. I mean, I eat my share of junk food, but he seems to thrive on it. Disgusting. But as long as he keeps his chicken nuggets off my experiments, I can put up with him.” She sighed, and her ebon tail flicked smartly, just once, behind her. “Just a little longer. His internship ends in a couple of weeks and I won’t have to smell his greasy leftovers again.”

“Just, uh, what do you study in there?” I asked, trying to peek around her and into the lab.

She blocked my view, arm bracing against the door frame and her ears backed. “It’s really technical. I wouldn’t expect—I mean, not that you’re stupid, but—it’s just very complicated and…umm, I’m sure you’ve got other deliveries to make.”

For the first time since I’d first met her three weeks ago, I felt a crack in my hopelessly lovesick crush. I twisted my expression into something I hoped looked polite. “We can’t all be scientists,” I replied. “Or ghost hunters.”

She blinked and frowned. “Wait, how do you know about—”

I gestured with my now-empty hot bag to the mailbox next to the door, where the latest Ghost Hunting Monthly was half-falling out.

“Just out of curiosity, if a ghost has unfinished business that can’t be finished—”

“That isn’t what we do here,” she insisted defensively. “That’s…that’s not even mine, I swear. Michael and his juvenile obsession! It’s not even real science. Definitely not real science.”

I shrugged and tried to make it look nonchalant. But my tail was thrashing, my ears were backed, and I could feel the fur along my spine standing at full attention. “Sure. Whatever. I’m just a pizza delivery girl. What do I know about particle physics and alternate dimensions? Enjoy the pizza.”

I left without another word. My heart had stopped racing and settled into my chest like a caged bird that had lost the will to sing. Never crush on customers. It’s a rule, and a damned good one. You’re just a delivery girl, some rand-o chick. A means to an end, not the kind of person someone like her dates, even if she swung that way. Someone that perfect? Gotta be straight. Or maybe indifferent. You’re growling down the wrong hole, Cal. Probably better you learn now rather than later.

My rear-view mirror shivered, and it wasn’t because the roads were rough. Through the static of my radio, I could hear a low chuckle.

I snarled and turned my radio off.

* * *

A week passed before Fantasma Pizzeria got another order from Ms. Novak. Sanchez, the owner, was in the kitchen, throwing pizza dough into the air and spinning it while Lilu took calls.

“Large anchovy and mushroom for You Know Who at You Know Where. Ross, you finished eating yet?” she asked. Her enamel bracelets clattered and jingled as she set the phone down on the counter. Pure human, with dark hair and darker eyes, she looked like a smaller version of her uncle, Sanchez. Well, smaller and female. Same solid, stocky build, same warm smile. She liked her pizza with hot peppers and sausage, with the crust so thin it was almost an afterthought. Part taco, part pizza, the best of both worlds, she’d said.

I sighed. “I got it. Ross will get lost. That complex is a maze.”

“Rats are good at mazes!” Ross hollered from the break room down the hall. “And besides, I wanna meet the chick you been moonin’ over.”

“Shut it, Wormtail,” I muttered. “I ain’t moonin’. I’m over it.” Ross had always been a bit of an asshole, but ever since he’d found out that I wasn’t exactly straight, he’d become truly insufferable. But it was always this side of a firing offense, and Sanchez didn’t have a backup driver, so Ross had stuck around. I wasn’t exactly swimming in options either, so I hadn’t left.

Besides, I was here first, damn it.

“Sure, sure,” he said, coming into view and jamming a mouthful of olive and onion pizza into his maw. The crust was so floppy that he had to fold it over to eat it. He licked his greasy fingers, then smoothed the dishwater-colored fur on his head. “Maybe she’s looking for a little one-on-one with a real man.” He winked at me.

I scowled back at him.

“Don’t cats eat mice?” Lilu commented.

Ross snickered. “If I’m lucky.”

I glared at him. This was worse than usual. Then, I smelled it: the stale stink of alcohol on his breath. Either he was hung over or had a beer before his shift. With all the other scents in the pizzeria, Sanchez and Lilu wouldn’t have noticed. I couldn’t let him drive like this.

“I got it,” I said. “I already know the way and Ross is still on break.”

It was Ross’s turn to scowl. “You’re wasting your time, kitty cat.”

I zipped up my jacket and reached for my keys. “Hope springs eternal. We’ve got the same taste in pizza, so that’s something.”

Ross’s eyes narrowed. “That’s assuming she’s even your type,” he snickered. “Poor Cal, falling in love with a straight girl.”

“Shut. Up.”

“Ross, you shut your hole, or I let her take you apart,” Lilu warned.

“You know,” he slurred, “I always wanted to ask, is it a cat thing or a lesbian thing, liking fish on a pie?”

Lilu and I stared at Ross, stunned.

Lilu recovered first. “Ross! Line, crossed. Apologize, right now or so help me—”

“Pfft, right. What’s Caliban gonna do? Sic her ghosts on me?”

I didn’t even realize I had moved. Ross was suddenly pinned to the wall in front of me, his faded Fantasma polo collar bunched between my fists, limp pizza splattered across the floor, and his naked tail writhing against my legs. The stink of alcohol gagged me, but I didn’t let go.

“What did you say?” I snarled. Ross flailed, knocking the yellow-tinted glasses I wore to hide my odd-colored eyes off my face.

“God damn it, Cal, drop him. Ross, you apologize. Now!” Sanchez said, stepping out of the kitchen. I dropped Ross and he hit the floor with a thud.

“I’m sorry,” Ross sneered, “that you’re a freak.”

“Sanchez, he’s drunk,” I said flatly. I wanted to find my glasses, but I’d heard them shatter. Wherever they were, they wouldn’t be doing me any good now.

“You lying little b—”

Sanchez didn’t give Ross a chance to finish. The grizzled pizzaiolo simply picked Ross up by his collar and threw him out the front door.

“I’m calling a cab, not because I give one tin shit what happens to you, but because I don’t want you driving drunk and killing someone. You show your face here again, I take it off. We clear?” he said.

I don’t know if Ross replied. The blood roaring in my ears was too loud. After a moment, I realized it wasn’t just my blood pounding. I was growling.

Sanchez came back in, calm as ice, and shut the door quietly behind him. “Cal, are you alright? I’d’ve got out here sooner, but I was—never mind. I shoulda got out here sooner, dough be damned.”

I swallowed and nodded. “I’m fine.”

Sanchez narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t, but I’m short a driver now. I’m sorry, chica. I hate to do this, but you’re the only driver I got left tonight. You got this?”

I took a deep, shuddering breath and composed myself. “Yeah, I got this.”

Sanchez nodded curtly and slipped back into the kitchen. He emerged a few minutes later with a hot bag and handed it to me.

I frowned. “She didn’t order cinnamon sticks this time,” I said.

“An extra,” he replied with a smile. “The way to a girl’s heart is through her stomach.”

Lilu snorted. “Not just a girl’s heart. Didn’t Uncle Ray propose to you over a pan of lasagna?”

Sanchez laughed and shrugged. “Sí, but everyone proposes to me after eating my lasagna. Ray was the first one worthy of the honor.”

I sighed. “Sanchez, this isn’t going to work.”

He shrugged. “Won’t know until you try,” he said. “Chica, I don’t know who broke you, and I don’t care. Sooner or later, you gotta pick up those pieces and turn it into something worth fighting for. You can’t just drift through life like…a…”

“Like a ghost?” I prompted wryly. I tossed the shattered remains of my glasses in the trash.

Sanchez threw up his hands. “Just deliver the damn pizza.”

I fled with the bag and didn’t look back.

* * *

I half expected to see Ross leaning against my rust-bucket of a car, but the rat was nowhere to be found. Clearly, he’d taken Sanchez’s warning to heart and vanished. Probably for the best. I would have smashed the pizza over his head. Terrible waste of a perfectly good pizza.

I looked up at the night sky, moonlight trickling through the dead claws of the October trees, and sighed. Everything looked different without my tinted lenses. Clearer. Sharper. I missed how my glasses turned the world into a study in sepia. My breath puffed across my muzzle before ghosting into the darkness.

Ghosting. Ghost.

I grimaced and laid the hot bag on the passenger seat before I buckled in. That hot bag was the only thing that had ever used the passenger seat.

I was so tired of being alone.

“I’m gonna do it,” I said to the empty car. “I’m going to ask for her number.”

But what about your—

I bared my teeth.

He won’t be a problem, I vowed, finger pads slipping on the key in the ignition. I repeated that line to myself all the way to Deanne’s lab.

Once again, I stood before Deanne’s office door. But this time, I was armed with new courage and a box of cinnamon sticks. I took a deep breath, tapped the buzzer, and squared my shoulders. Even my wayward tail behaved, flicking only once or twice while I waited patiently.

Deanne answered the door a minute later. I could hear claws scrabbling with the lock on the other side, and then she was in front of me, eyes wide and whiskers spread.

She didn’t look as perfect this time. Her fur was dusty along her nose, and her lab coat had greenish spatter on it. Instead of coconut, she smelled like ozone.

“Oh. Oh my goodness, I—I’m glad it’s you. I wanted to say—I wanted to apologize for my unkind words last time. It was wrong of me and…um.” She squinted at me. “You aren’t wearing your usual glasses.”

I shrugged. “They broke.”

Deanne looked at me a moment longer, and I knew from her expression that she’d just noticed my eyes didn’t match. I braced myself for the inevitable and waited. Here it comes, the exclamation about my eyes being different as if I didn’t already know, asking if I could really see ghosts. The sudden reluctance to meet my gaze, lest I steal their souls and keep them in jars or something.

But she didn’t say any of it. She met my gaze without fear and smiled. “You have lovely eyes,” she said.

I blinked, nonplussed. “Uh, thanks?” Real articulate, Cal.

She cleared her throat and looked at the two boxes I pulled out of the hot bag. “I didn’t order cinnamon sticks.”

“No, but you do from time to time. It sounded like you were under a lot of stress so, uhh. Here,” I said, handing the two boxes to her. God, I’m such an idiot. Sanchez even gave me a perfect setup, and I can’t do it.

Deanne looked at the boxes like she didn’t know what to do with them. “I…thank you. Hang on, I have something for you as well.” She juggled the boxes for a moment and plucked something from the back pocket of her pants. A slip of paper.

A slip of paper with a series of numbers on it.

“Would you like to get coffee or something some time? I have tomorrow off, if that would work for you too.”

I took the slip of paper from her hand and stared at it, utterly and completely dumbstruck. “I…yes. Yes! I have tomorrow off, too.” I didn’t, but Sanchez would give it to me if I asked. When I asked. I tore off a corner of the slip of paper and scrawled my own number on it, my paw shaking slightly.

What are you thinking? You’re going to get her killed!

No, I thought, not this time. This time, it’ll be different.

* * *

When I returned to Fantasma Pizzeria, Deanne’s number in hand, Sanchez cheered and gestured to Lilu. Lilu rolled her eyes and sent a paper airplane into the kitchen. A paper airplane that looked a lot like a five dollar bill. Sanchez snatched it mid-air.

“Wait, you took bets on me? God, I work with a bunch of assholes,” I said.

“About time you got your head out your ass,” Lilu said. “So, where you gonna take your date?”

“Coffee,” I said bluntly. “It’s just coffee. Not a date.”

“Coffee can be a date,” Sanchez hollered from the kitchen.

“It’s not a date! She might not even be interested in me like that. She might just want someone to talk to about…things. On a related note, Sanchez, I need tomorrow off,” I said. “I know you don’t have another driver, but—”

Sanchez’s throaty laugh echoed from the kitchen.

“I got a nephew, though. He needs the cash and he just got his license. You got your night off, chica. Make the most of it!”

* * *

The next morning, I was a complete and total spaz and turned my tiny studio apartment into a disaster zone. I groomed my fur until it lay soft and sleek, then messed it up again because it just didn’t look right. Every single article of clothing I owned was inspected, scrutinized, and discarded. Graphic tees, too nerdy. Plain tee shirts, too boring. Blue jeans, too casual. Cargo pants, too…no. Slacks were too formal, I didn’t own a single pair of khakis, and I was definitely not showing up in one of my two skirts. An ex of mine had a thing for naughty schoolgirl roleplay and left them when we broke up. They were way too short for a first date. Hell, they were probably too short to wear in public. Would she like to see me in a skirt, though? I mean, I hate them, but for her, I’d wear one on a date—

It’s not a date! It’s just coffee. Everyone does coffee. Friends do coffee all the time.

I took a break and grabbed the snow globe off my desk. It was a cheap prop I’d bought ages ago at a yard sale, something you’d set out for Halloween. Unless you’re weird, like me, and consider Halloween decorations a kind of permanent décor. With a flick of my wrist, I sent the black glitter inside swirling. “What do you think, Felix?” I asked the little cat in the globe. “Date, or coffee with a friend?” The cat didn’t respond. He never did. Just stood on his little grave mound, mouth open in a hiss and back arched. I sighed, set it down on my desk again, and went back to the closet.

As I rummaged deeper, I heard a thump come from behind me, on my desk. I paused. There it was again, followed by a crash. I jumped back from my closet and skidded to a halt beside my bed.

Sitting in the middle of the floor were the shattered remains of the snow globe. The black cat stared up at me forlornly from the floor, tail and paws broken from the grave mound it once stood upon. Black glitter and fluid oozed across the floor and began to soak into the ragged rug next to my night stand.

“How the hell?” I murmured. Damn it, that had been my favorite snow globe. I’d deliberately set it far back on my desk so it wouldn’t get knocked off and broken. How had it ended up over here?

The fur along my spine stood on end. There was no way that snow globe could have simply fallen off my desk. No mundane way. I lived alone in a tiny little studio, so there were no roommates to pull pranks on me. I’d never seen a mouse able to throw a snow globe many times its own weight, so it couldn’t be that.

I shivered, running my paws across my upper arms, then froze.

No.

No, it’s been quiet for weeks. It can’t be that!

I whimpered and turned very slowly toward the mirror across from my bed. Panicked breath frosted the tips of my whiskers.

Caliban.

My name, written in blocky red letters, on the inside of the glass.

“Go away,” I said, my voice cracking in terror. “You aren’t welcome here. You’re dead. You can’t hurt me anymore!”

Sinful. Disgraceful. No kit of mine.

I shrieked and reached for something, anything to throw at the mirror. My paw landed on something cool and heavy. I gripped and threw, only belatedly realizing what I’d grabbed.

A snow globe. The one that was supposed to be in pieces on the floor. Only it wasn’t. It never was.

The snow globe hit the mirror and shattered. The words smeared together like wet ink until they vanished below the edge of the mirror. All that remained were the broken pieces of the snow globe. The mirror was unscathed.

“Gaslighting me, even in death,” I croaked. “I must have really pissed you off this time. Good.” I bared my fangs at the mirror. “If you’re angry, I must be doing something right.”

When the mirror remained quiescent, I knew my father’s ghost had run out of juice for the day. I cleaned up the mess, tossed the glass shards into the trash, and finished getting ready for my date.

Blue jeans, blue tank top with a Wonder Woman logo, and black Converse Chucks. The finishing touch was my backup pair of amber-tinted sunglasses with silver rims.

I looked at the mirror one last time. It rattled slightly. With a hiss, I fled my apartment.

* * *

Coffee was at a Rain Deer. There’s one on every street corner these days, and I have yet to find a better place to get a sugary drink that in no way resembles real coffee. It’s also considered a “safe” place for people like me. Non-human, non-straight, non-conforming, non-whatever. Thankfully, I’d come early enough that most of the tables were still unclaimed. A pair of corvine-forms occupied one table, talking in low voices. One had dyed the feathers along the center of her head bright blue. She looked at me, nodded, and went back to her conversation.

I ordered a blended concoction with coffee, caramel, mocha, and coconut before wandering to the end of the counter to wait. I was early; Deanne was nowhere to be seen. The barista (a lupine-form) finished my drink with a flourish of whipped cream and slid it towards me. I thanked him and found a table by a window.

What if she doesn’t come? What if she stands you up?

Well, then Sanchez can find someone else to deliver pizzas to her address. I’ll pick up a six pack of hard cider on the way back to my apartment, and by the time I finish it off, I’ll be over it. Probably.

And so, I waited.

I finished my drink.

I ordered another one.

I waited some more.

I was halfway through the second one when Deanne arrived, looking flustered. For a moment, I didn’t recognize her without her lab coat, but her laugh when the barista flirted with her gave her away. Deanne dug her wallet out of a shoulder bag covered in Doctor Who, Supernatural, and Ghostbusters pins, paid, and stepped to the end of the counter to await her drink. She peeked into her bag, rummaging around, and suddenly looked in my direction.

“Deanne?”

She looked at me blankly for a moment before her expression split into a relieved grin.

“Punctual, I like that,” she said, setting her bag down.

“I deliver pizzas,” I replied. “It’s a hazard of the trade.”

“Oh, right, sorry, I…” Her fur sleeked, suddenly making her look much smaller. Something in her bag vibrated loudly, and she swore.

“Stupid thing won’t…stop…got it! Sorry, notification from the lab on one of my experiments. I’ll just turn this thing off.” The buzzing sound abruptly cut off.

I smiled. “It’s fine.”

“I’ll…I’ll be right back. I’ll be less awkward after coffee, I swear,” she said, and retreated back to the counter for her coffee.

She returned a few minutes later with a very large, very dark iced drink.

“Did I hear that right? Are there six shots of espresso in there?” I asked.

Deanne nodded. “It’s basically a cardiac arrest in a cup. I’m a hopeless addict. So many late night experiments.” She settled down into the chair across from me, her bag across her lap.

I gestured to the buttons on the bag. “I take it you’re a fan?”

“Of which one?” she said with a laugh. “I stream episodes occasionally while I’m in the lab. So much of my work is the ‘hurry up and wait’ variety. I’m loving the new regeneration of the Doctor.”

I grinned. “Me too,” I replied. “The previous one was kind of annoying.”

“Oh my goodness, you thought so too? Everyone else seemed so enamored with him. I thought he was such an ass.”

We spent an hour just talking about geeky stuff. Not just favorite shows but books, comics, and movies. We nerded out over a mutual love of the new Star Wars, debated if Toothless could beat Smaug in a fight, and if Wonder Woman and Conan would be friends or rivals. Before I knew it, it was well after lunchtime.

“Oh crap, I need to head back to the lab. I can’t believe we spent the whole morning here!” Deanne said.

“We should do it again sometime,” I blurted.

“Any time,” Deanne said. “Please. You have no idea. No one at work even knows who Drizzt is. They think I’m discharging static when I say his name.”

* * *

Weeks passed, but I barely noticed. Funny how that happens when you’re in love. We went to movies, tried out every sushi restaurant within easy driving distance, and spent one memorable weekend at a sci-fi/comic convention, nerding out in all the best ways.

I prodded Deanne now and again about what she did in her lab, why she had an entire bookcase of paranormal reference books on her shelves, and while Deanne didn’t admit outright what she did, she eventually stopped denying it.

“Just don’t go telling everyone I’m some kind of ghost buster,” Deanne said to me. “Bad enough that paranormal phenomenon get derided as unscientific. I’ll lose what little funding I have if there’s so much as a whiff of pseudoscience to what I do.”

Every time I came home after a date with her, things got worse. I’d walk in to find every cabinet door wide open, contents stacked in unwieldy pillars to the ceiling. Or my mirror smeared with black ichor. My stereo would randomly turn on at full blast with deranged yowling. It was as if the longer my relationship with Deanne went, the stronger and angrier the spectre of my father became.

Soulless. Spiritless. Hollow, sinful little stray, my mirror scrawled at me. The blocky letters faded away after a moment, but the after-image of them was etched in my mind.

I whimpered. What would happened if—when—I moved in with Deanne? Would this ghost follow me?

You have to tell her.

No, I don’t. It’ll go away. It has to. Sooner or later, my father’s damned ghost will realize his unfinished business is never getting finished, and he’ll move on.

Denial, thy name is Cal.

By Christmas, I had one harrowing haunting event a day, occasionally two, whether I went out with Deanne or not. I started finding excuses to not go back to my apartment, taking late night shifts or camping out in an internet café. Anything to get me away from that place. I was tempted to spend the night at Deanne’s place, but I knew I’d never get any sleep. I’d be too terrified of what I’d wake up to.

“Cal! Order up!”

I startled. “Yes! Right! I heard you!”

“That’s the third time I said it. You sure you’re alright? You look like crap,” Lilu said.

“I’m fine,” I grunted. I shoved the pizzas in my hot bag.

“She’s not hurting you, is she?” Sanchez asked, leaning over the counter. His usually bronze colored arms were coated in flour all the way to his elbows. Even his eyebrows, furrowed with concern, were dusted with white powder. It took much of the bite out of his threat when he looked like he’d just face-planted into a snow bank.

“No, not—not Deanne. Never Deanne,” I said. “Just…having a lot of nightmares lately. Not sleeping well. Is that all for this round?”

Sanchez nodded and pushed back from the counter.

“Whatever’s got your tail in a twist, chica, I hope it passes. If talking about it will help, you know my door’s always open,” he said.

I swallowed, and almost broke. I almost spilled the whole story, about the doors slamming, the lights burning out constantly, the way milk would spoil without explanation or the strange skittering noises I’d hear in the walls at night.

Right. Crazy Cal and her crazy ghost stories. Like they’d ever believe me. I’d learned the hard way that the fastest way to lose friends was to tell them the truth about what I saw. What haunted me.

But Deanne. Deanne might. She was still shifty as hell when I’d ask her about what she did in that lab or whenever the topic of the paranormal came up, but maybe…maybe.

“Thanks, Sanchez,” I said, then grinned mischievously. “I would, but it’s a girl thing and—”

He threw his hands up. “Say no more! I get it! Talk to that lovely lady friend of yours, and best of luck!”

Lilu spat something in Spanish that I didn’t catch and finished in English. “My uncle, so brave until women things are involved!”

“It’s why I have a boyfriend, sobrina!” Sanchez chuckled. Lilu threw a pen at him, and he retreated to the safety of his kitchen.

I finished my shift and spent the drive home doing some hard thinking. I woke up to the mirror in my bathroom iced over and every light bulb burned out. I replaced the bulbs and ignored the mirror.

I’d tell her. And if she didn’t believe me, well, I tried. Better to know now, before things got any more serious.

* * *

I brooded into the evening and through the lovely dinner Deanne had made for us at her apartment. Finally, after half an hour of pushing my salmon listlessly around my plate, Deanne called me out on it.

“You keep scowling like that, and your face will stick that way.” She said it gently, her ears backed in concern.

I sighed. “Sorry, just…thinking about things. Rent. Bills. Family things.”

“You want to talk about it?” she asked. “It might help.”

You need to do this. She deserves to know. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and began to speak. I can do this. And if she throws me out or laughs, I can walk away knowing I tried.

“My father was…he wasn’t a good person,” I began. “He had his moments, and I’m sure he loved me before—before he realized I wasn’t like his other kittens. I was sick all the time and barely had the energy to walk, let alone play. But my parents did everything they could to keep me alive, because…because I had different colored eyes.”

“Heterochromia,” Deanne murmured, backing her ears briefly. “I’d heard that Angora purity cults try to ‘breed’ for it specifically. I’d…wondered, when I saw your eyes, but I didn’t want to pry.”

I nodded. “My father was no exception.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and continued, “God, it makes me sick to even remember it. My father wanted me to marry a nice Angora neko-form, just like him. Salt-white fur, pale green eyes. He wanted to keep our bloodline pure. Thing is, I have no interest in males, and even less in kittens. As soon as he made it clear what he thought my future should be, I tried to resist. I tried to convince him that I didn’t want that. He didn’t listen. The fights we had were epic, but I didn’t tell him why I wanted something else for a future until one day, I finally screamed at him I had no interest at all in toms like that and he—” I choked.

Soulless, spiritless, sinful little stray! No kit of mine. Get out! Get out! OUT! His voice howled in my mind, as loud as if he was right there, roaring it into my ear.

“He disowned you,” Deanne finished. She came around the breakfast bar and wrapped her arms around me, purring softly.

“He threw me out,” I said. “Wouldn’t even let me get any of my stuff. I don’t know if he thought I’d come crawling back or die in a gutter somewhere. I only knew I couldn’t go back. I just…drifted from doorstep to doorstep for weeks. Months. Didn’t go back to school, because there suddenly didn’t seem to be a point to it. Graduation came and went, and I barely even noticed it. Sanchez found me digging through his dumpster for pizza crusts just as the trees were starting to turn and…I don’t know. I don’t know why, but he let me inside, let me clean up in the janitor’s closet, and he asked questions. Not—not how I ended up like that, just if I could drive, if I knew the neighborhood. I didn’t have a car, but I knew most of the major streets by then. He offered to rent me a car, gave me a job as a delivery girl. I got free pizza and a steady paycheck; he got reliable help. I guess he’d had a bad run on hiring drivers.” I swiped at the damp under my eyes. I was not crying. I refused to. My father had stolen all the tears he ever would from me. “I didn’t even know he’d…that my father had passed away until I got a note on Facebook from a high school acquaintance. I looked up the obituaries and there he was. I didn’t even care. He’s dead, and all I felt when I saw that obit was relief. And then…and then, shit, I felt sick because I didn’t care, because I should care, because he was my father God damn it and…and…fuck.” I took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to compose myself. I pressed the back of my paw to my muzzle and squeezed my eyes shut, but it was too late. The tears came anyway. Ugly, wracking sobs that broke the dam I’d built to hold the pain back and left me shaking uncontrollably.

Deanne got up and hugged me. “How long ago was this?” she asked.

“Almost four years since he passed. Next Tuesday, it’ll be four years,” I said between sobs. “I shouldn’t be upset. I shouldn’t be so broken up about it. He was an asshole, and he treated me like crap because I wasn’t what he wanted, but he was my father and I can’t…I don’t…it’s all so confused. I tried to call my mom, but she never answered her phone.” I had tried, several times a day, from the Fantasma landline and later from the cheap cell phone I could afford. After a week of nothing but voicemail, I took the hint. I don’t know what I expected. It wasn’t like she went looking for me after my father had thrown me out.

Deanne made a soft hushing sound and hugged me tighter. “I know it’s only been a few months for us, but if you didn’t want to be alone, you could stay here. I don’t have a guest room, just a couch, and you’d have to share with The Holtz, but—”

“The what?” I blinked, rubbing the last of the tears from my eyes.

Deanna giggled. “My cat. Sorry, I know you haven’t met her yet. She’s so shy of new people. Let me see if I can coax her out from under my bed.” She scurried off to the bedroom.

“You never told me you had a cat!” I called after her.

Deanne laughed, sheepish. “A lot of people think it’s weird for a neko-form to have a cat for a pet. But she was a stray, and I couldn’t just leave her out in the cold. Don’t worry, she’s had all her shots.”

I sniffled and tried to groom my fur back into some semblance of order, but I knew it was a lost cause. Nothing short of a real shower was going to get the tear stains out of the white fur under my eyes.

I curled up on the couch, one pillow hugged to my chest, and I swore I’d only just closed my eyes when something soft and cool touched the tip of my nose. My whiskers twitched, and I opened one eye to find a very tiny black-and-white colored kitten in front of me, one paw raised and ready to bat my nose again.

I opened both eyes and looked at her. She looked back at me. Neither of us seemed to know what to do about the situation.

“Hello,” I said softly. “You must be The Holtz that Deanne was talking about.”

The kitten tilted her head to one side. Slowly, she closed both eyes and opened them again. I returned the gesture, which in Cat meant something like “I trust you, you can trust me.” She made a happy prurrow and curled up on my shoulder, purring softly.

“Sorry Cal, I can’t seem to find—oh, you found her.”

“I can’t move,” I said. “It’s the law. When a kitten falls asleep on you, you become the furniture until they wake up and move on.”

“Wow, she must really like you. I’ve never seen her stay in the same room as anyone but me, let alone fall asleep on them.”

“I can’t believe you have an actual cat,” I said. “And a jellicle cat at that. She’s practically a cousin to you.”

“It’s not illegal, just weird. It’s not even the weirdest thing about me,” Deanne protested. “Also, you never told me you read Elliot.”

I laughed, and the tiny kitten woke. She glared at me, then meowed plaintively at Deanne.

“Needy,” she said, picking her up and plopping down on the floor near me.

“So what is the weirdest thing about you?” I asked.

Deanne sighed. “It’s complicated. Besides, we were talking about you, not me. What do you want to do next Tuesday?”

“Do?”

“You need a distraction,” Deanne said. “Something to take your mind off it. Movie? How about a movie. What do you say? Is it a date?”

“Yes! Yes, I’d like that.”

“It’s a date, then. I’ll drop you off at your apartment on the way to work tomorrow morning.”

“What? No, I can’t…I’d be imposing, and I don’t want to—”

Deanne hushed me. “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have offered if I thought it was an imposition. You’re safe and sound here.” The corner of her lip quirked wryly. “No ghosts will haunt you here, I promise.”

I relented, too tired to argue.

We said our goodnights, and while I was a little disappointed not to be sleeping in the same bed as Deanne, I was content to just be near her for the night. Even if she’d wanted to do more, I wasn’t up for it. Too much on my mind to enjoy it. Our first time—if we had a first time—shouldn’t come on the heels of me having an emotional breakdown.

God, and I still hadn’t told her everything. She needed to know about the broken dishes and the light bulbs that kept burning out, and…but it would have to wait. Again.

I curled up, Holtz nestled under one arm, and closed my eyes. I was safe. I was sound. Nothing could get me here.

When I heard a cabinet rattle in her kitchen in the middle of the night, I didn’t think anything of it. Deanne probably just got up for a midnight snack or something. It couldn’t be anything else. Couldn’t.

* * *

Before I knew it, Tuesday morning arrived. The hauntings got worse, but having something to look forward to made it easier to clean up after each episode. I even hummed to myself while restocking on light bulbs. I finished my shift at Fantasma and practically flew out of the parking lot toward my apartment to change. Sanchez and Lilu both cheered as I left, wishing me luck on my date.

I expected to walk in on an uncanny disaster, cabinets open and my mirror seeping black ichor. What I found was…nothing. My apartment looked exactly as I had left it, down to the last tin of Neko Chow tuna.

I didn’t question it. Maybe it’s finally winding down. Maybe his ghost finally realized his business can’t be finished and moved on. I changed into jeans and a tee shirt as fast as I could and was back out the door, zooming toward Deanne’s place.

I slid into the guest parking space and called her from my cell. “Dee? I’m here!”

“Be right down!” She made a kiss sound and hung up.

My heart fluttered and I grinned like an idiot. For the first time in what felt like my entire life, I was happy. I didn’t think I could feel any better. But then Deanne was walking down the path toward my car, and…wow.

She wore a black long coat and a TARDIS-blue scarf, with a matching hat covering her ears. Deanne slipped into the passenger side and huffed, rubbing her paws up and down her arms. “Damn it, it’s freezing. I don’t usually see my breath this much unless I’m in my lab.”

“With any luck, they’ll have the heat in the theater cranked up,” I said. “Wait, your lab is cold enough to see your breath?”

“Well, yes and no,” Deanne replied, flustered. “It’s not important.”

“You still haven’t told me exactly what you do in there.”

“Science. Lots of science. With physics!”

“Paranormal science?”

Deanne gave me a look, and I grinned. My grin faded a moment later as a thought occurred to me.

“Alright, so a question about ghosts,” I said. “Why do they haunt a place?”

“Or a person,” Deanne said. “They can haunt people.”

“So…why?”

Deanne sighed. “Look, this is all hypothetical, okay? No one has ever proved there are ghosts or even souls. But say they’re real, and say people can leave pieces of themselves behind as they live, like fingerprints or hair, only spectral. Sometimes, that’s all a ghost is: a walking memory. And sometimes, it’s less like a fingerprint and more like a drop of blood smeared over the face of reality. Whatever it is that makes up a soul or a ghost, it lingers and it remembers much more than a moment in time. It remembers what it meant to be alive. Most of the time, they fade away in a few days, off to wherever souls go after their body stops supporting them. But sometimes they died so suddenly or violently that they don’t know they’re dead. Or they know that they’re dead, but can’t let go because they have unfinished business and can’t rest until it’s been settled.”

The steering wheel creaked under my paws. “So…hypothetically, what if a ghost’s unfinished business can’t be completed?”

“That’s when it gets complicated. They can’t move on, they can’t find peace. Most go mad. They become what is known as a poltergeist, and if they’re really strong, they become demons.”

“Wait, demons are real?”

“No! Of course not. There’s no such thing as demons. Or ghosts.” She didn’t sound certain.

“So these imaginary ghosts with unfinished business, what do you do about them when they go mad?”

Deanne grimaced. “Not going to give up, are you?”

“Nope!”

She sighed. “You promise you won’t call me insane or deluded?”

I held up three fingers in a salute. “Scout’s honor.”

“You were a girl scout?”

“Not for very long,” I said. “Things are better now, but at the time, by troop wasn’t very open-minded. They could tolerate a Neko, but a Neko who wasn’t straight was too much for them.”

“Smooth-skins can be so close-minded,” Deanne muttered darkly.

“What, we’re ghouls now?”

“Nah, real ghouls don’t look like they’re rotting apart. That’s a zombie.”

I pulled up to a red light and I turned to look at Deanne. She winked.

“You’re yanking my tail,” I said.

“Would I do such a thing to my own girlfriend?” she said with mock indignity.

“Wait, I’m your girlfriend?”

“Cal, you’re slower than molasses in January. The light turned green.”

“What? Oh! Damn it.”

We made it to the theater with plenty of time to spare, but any time I tried to broach the topic of ghosts again, Deanne hushed me with a pointed look.

“Not here. I’ll tell you more when we’re alone, I promise.”

* * *

“That was way better than I thought it would be,” I said as we left the theater. I popped a few last pieces of popcorn into my mouth and tossed the empty bag in the trash by the exit.

“Eh. The book was better,” said Deanne.

I laughed. “Isn’t it always?”

I followed her out the back door and into the cold. Deanne took my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine and kissed me on the cheek. Snow fell gently all around us, dusting her black fur. I could barely see the fluffy flakes on my own pale pelt. Deanne licked a snowflake off my whisker, catching it on the tip of her tongue.

“Would you like to head back to my place? I have a bottle of spiced white wine we could share.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

The drive felt shorter, the walk up to her apartment shorter still. Deanne held my hand and I felt like the luckiest girl alive. She let go to get the wine and giggled.

She had a cute giggle.

Deanne returned and put a glass of wine in my hand. I frowned.

“Hot wine?”

Deanne smiled and nodded. “It’s got mulling spices. It’s supposed to be served warm,” she said, sipping from her own glass.

I shrugged and took a sip. Sweet, spicy wine flowed across my tongue and down my throat, warming me to my core. Ohh, this is nice.

“I think she likes it, Mikey,” Deanne giggled.

“I didn’t take you for the wine type. Doesn’t this kill brain cells or something?”

Deanne shrugged. “Probably. But after what I put up with all day, I need a vice of some kind or I’ll go nuts.”

I swirled the wine in my glass and took another sip. “So, what do you do all day in that lab?”

“You’re going to think I’m insane,” Deanne said, taking another sip. A droplet clung to one whisker, and I had to resist the urge to catch it on my tongue like Deanne had been catching snowflakes.

“You’re dating me. I already think you’re insane,” I said.

Deanne sighed and sat down at the tiny table in her kitchen. “It’s…complicated. And it’s not considered sound science. We’re trying to change that, but until we have a real breakthrough, people are going to think we’re just wasting time and university resources.”

“Ghosts,” I ventured.

She nodded. “Ghosts. Physics has already postulated that there’s more than one dimension. What we haven’t figured out yet is why sometimes, those dimensions overlap and even mingle with our own. But they do, and something that should be dead reaches out across the gulf to touch our world. What we’re trying to figure out is how it happens, and why.”

“It sounds fascinating.”

“Honestly, it’s mostly boring. We haven’t had a real breakthrough catching or even recording a real ghost. Not reliably. Something about them just shorts out electrical equipment, and we can’t shield it without making it impossible to record. Old cameras with film sometimes work, but it’s too easy to fake those. They can’t be used as evidence.”

“You can fake a digital picture too,” I said.

Deanne sighed. “Yeah, that too. I have a few things I developed in the lab that are supposed to at least neutralize a ghost, but that hardly helps to catch one. Those I’ve been able to test. Of course, all the recordings just look like I’m shooting the darkness.”

I laughed and took another sip of my wine. It warmed me right to the core and made everything feel really good.

“Do you need a partner?” I asked. I slapped a paw over my muzzle the instant it came out of my mouth.

Deanne laughed and looked at me. “Trying to get out of the pizza delivery business?”

I shrugged, blushing. “It pays the bills, but it’s not what I’d call rewarding work.”

Deanne swirled her wine in her glass before answering. “What can you do?”

“I, uhh, well. I know my way around electronics. Hardware and software. I’m pretty good with Linux and I can pretty much pick up whatever you throw at me.”

Deanne made a sound of encouragement, so I kept going. “I’m a fast learner. I mean, I don’t know particle physics or anything, but I’m willing to learn. Always was, just…no money for college, you know? But the library is free, and there are a few online courses I took when I could afford it.”

She nodded. “Anything else?” she asked, twisting the stem of her wineglass between two fingers.

“I’m good with my paws.”

I wanted to slap myself the minute the words were out of my mouth.

Deanne looked at me, one eyebrow arched upward. “Oh?”

I swallowed and nodded. Deanne set her glass on the table and leaned forward, her whiskers close, so close. I couldn’t help it; I inhaled the scent of her. Wine and coconut and honey and popcorn from the theater and the sweet, spicy scent of just her.

Deanne nuzzled me gently, purring. She took off the tinted glasses I always wore and set them aside. “Just how good are you with your paws?”

“I can show you, if you’d like.” It came out strained, my throat clenching as it tried to match Deanne’s throaty purr.

“I would very much like that,” she said and took my paws. She led me to her bedroom and, before I could do more than take in the pink walls or the black comforter or the dresser with an oval mirror, she kissed me.

God, I wish I had the words for it. My blood was already singing with the wine, but the touch of her lips made the song crescendo. The tip of her tongue teased along my lip, and I let her in, my paws sliding up her back. No claws. No shredding her blouse, I told myself.

Deanne pulled back, and I dove after her. We tumbled to the bed, a tangle of arms, legs, and tails. Her hands slid under my shirt, I slipped down the back of her pants. I wanted to touch her, every inch of her, to make her yowl and writhe until—

Something rattled next to me, and a sliver of warning pierced my awareness. It sounded…familiar. Like a mirror rattling against the wall.

Can’t be. Not here. Can’t happen here. Probably just the headboard against the—oh God. Deanne’s tongue rasped across my bare belly, making me gasp and arch my back. She laughed, eyes gleaming in the half light from the door.

“You’re beautiful, Cal,” she murmured, kissing the curve of my hip.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you from the moment I saw you,” I said.

“Was it everything you dreamed?”

I chuckled. “I don’t know. Need to try it a few more times to be sure.”

Deanne grinned and kissed me again, pressing her body against mine. She was warm, so warm, her black fur a few shades darker than the comforter we were laying on. She’d kicked off her shoes (I hadn’t noticed when) and revealed lovely pink footpads on the bottoms of her feet.

It was adorable. I don’t know why, but I found it adorable.

Deanne kissed me again and slid my shirt up. She hesitated, her paw resting on my chest.

“Cal, are those scars?”

Desire died. I scrambled backward, one arm over my chest, ears backed. “It…it’s nothing. I, uh, I can leave my shirt on, if it bothers you.”

I started to shove my shirt back down, but Deanne stopped me. She peeled my shirt completely off, revealing four long, shiny scars across my chest.

“Claws,” she said.

“Yeah.” I looked away.

“Who?” Deanne demanded. Her voice was low, cold. Furious.

“My father,” I said. “From the day I left. They’ve mostly healed. They don’t even hurt anymore.”

Deanne hugged me, squeezing hard enough that my ribs creaked. “Ack! Air! Becoming an issue!”

“Sorry, sorry, I just…I can’t wrap my head around why someone would hurt you, hurt anyone like this.”

“My father was…complicated. He wasn’t always like this. Or so my mother insisted. But if there were good times, I can’t…I can’t remember them. I was never his favorite, and when we had that last fight, he tried…well. He didn’t succeed, and he can’t now.”

Deanne nodded and kissed me again. “I’m so sorry,” she said, nuzzling my neck.

“I’m not,” I said. “It brought me here. To you.”

And this time, I kissed her first. I kissed her with all my heart and soul, no longer caring if this would be my only time with her. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t shied away from my quirks, from my scars, from any part of me.

Just this once, just for this one night, it’ll be OK. Nothing will happen. I won’t let it. I want to be happy just this once.

Deanne returned the kiss, one finger tracing the line of a scar. “Will you stay the night?” she asked.

“If you’ll have me,” I breathed.

“For every moment that you’re awake,” she replied. Her lips locked to mine, and for one beautiful, glorious moment, I was perfectly, deliriously happy.

And then that moment passed.

A snarl and a hiss came from the open door. Illuminated in the doorway was Deanne’s cat, every inch of fur along her back raised and her ears flat against her skull. She hissed again, her gaze riveted to something on the far side of the room.

“Holtz? What wrong, sweetie?” Deanne said.

Holtz didn’t answer. She hissed again, tail lashing, and clawed at the air but refused to step foot into the room.

Something rattled against the wall, and my blood froze in my veins. I turned to look at the mirror.

Have you ever looked into a mirror and seen something move out of the corner of your eye, but it vanished too quickly for you to see what it was? Something flickered at the edge of my vision, warping the surface of the mirror like a ripple just under the surface of a still pond. I stood and approached the mirror. My eyes, my mismatched eyes my father thought were so precious, stared back at me wide and stricken. I watched as the color bled out of them, watched at they filmed over as if in death.

“Deanne…”

My reflection leered, twisted. Something raked across the back of the image. Like claws. Just like claws behind a sheet. The mirror bowed outward, silvery surface bubbling with corrosion.

“Deanne, run!” I screamed.

The mirror shattered. I threw my hands up to shield my face from the shards of glass, my eyes clenched tight. Deanne yowled. I didn’t see if she got away.

Something grabbed me, shook me like a kitten. “Useless. Soulless.”

My father’s voice rumbled like grinding gravel. I opened my eyes and looked my ghostly father in the face. Pale fur, white as salt, glowed in the dark. His eyes, once perfect sky blue, were filmed over with cataracts. His suit hung from his body in tatters, shredded and slick with rot.

“No daughter of mine will commit such blasphemy,” he growled. He closed one paw around my throat and began to squeeze.

I’m not yours! You disowned me! I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. His grip was too tight.

“Cal, close your eyes!” Deanne shouted.

I squinted my eyes shut, and suddenly felt a burst of heat along the side of my face. My father snarled and let go, dropping me to the floor. I lay, gasping for air and opened one eye.

Deanne stood in the doorway, a heavy contraption slung over one shoulder. She held what looked like a gun from a game of laser tag in her paws.

“What…the hell?” I coughed. “Is that…?” I couldn’t think of the word.

“Nope. It’s a spectral inverter. And it’ll scorch your retinas if you look at it!”

The ghost of my father roared and flew at Deanne, who roared right back and hit him again with a beam of red-black energy. My father dodged and laughed.

“Sinner. Blasphemer. How dare you lay hands on my little kitten!”

“Over-protective assbag from beyond the grave!” Deanne snapped back. “Go back to where you came from!” She shot at him again, and missed again. My father ducked under the beam and grabbed Deanne’s arm, twisting it viciously. Deanne shrieked and dropped the gun. With a cackle, my father lifted her and threw her against the wall. I heard something snap and screamed.

“Leave her alone!”

“Can’t leave, Caliban. Come back to God, kitten. Come back, give up this sinful life. Can’t let go until you do.” He turned to me, blind eyes blank but his expression paternal. “Need to see you settled, need to see you taken care of, as God intended.”

“I can’t,” I sobbed. “It doesn’t work that way. I can’t be what you want me to be. I never could. I never wanted a family, or even to be with a tom! I can never be happy like that! You have to let it go, let me go!”

“Never,” he growled. “Never. My daughter. Mine. Children obey. You’re mine, my own baby daughter, and you’ll do as I say!”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I stood up straighter and looked him in his dead eyes. “I’m not your anything. You made that perfectly clear the last time I saw you alive.” I touched the place on my chest where the scars of his claws lingered. “It’s over. If that’s your unfinished business, I’m sorry. It’ll never be finished. I won’t destroy myself in a life I never wanted, just so you can be happy! It’s sick!”

My father went very still for a moment, his ghostly form wavering. “No. Can’t move on. Must save. Save you. From this. Only way. My child. My sinful, soulless daughter.” He tipped his head back and yowled, his pale fur growing even brighter. “Come to God, my daughter. It’s the only way to save your soul. I see it now!” And he came at me again.

I ducked, slipping under his grip like I always had as a child. Even in death, he underestimates how small I am. Scrawny, wiry Cal, the runt of the litter, always head and shoulders smaller than my siblings. I skidded across the floor and reached for Deanne.

“Deanne!”

She groaned and shifted. “My arm. I think he broke it. Blaster needs two hands, too much recoil.”

I picked up the blaster, aimed, and pulled the trigger. I blasted my father right in the chest, blowing a smoking hole in his ghostly body. He shrieked and drifted back from me.

“No more,” I said, and shot him again. “Never again.”

His form got more and more transparent. I shot him again, and he backed to the shattered remains of Deanne’s mirror.

“Caliban. My daughter. My child.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.

“No,” I said. “No real father hurts their child the way you hurt me.”

I pulled the trigger one final time, and my father’s ghost dissipated into fine mist. Then, he was gone.

I dropped the blaster to the floor and sank down after it, tears matting the fur under my eyes. Everything after that was a blur. I remember getting back up, and I remember that I drove Deanne to the ER as soon as I stopped shaking. As soon as her arm was set and in a cast, I remember numbly driving her back home. We sat in my car outside her apartment for a moment, neither of us quite sure what to say.

Finally, an arm wrapped around me, soft and warm and alive. “I’m so sorry, Cal,” Deanne said, finally breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” I sniffled. “So am I.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Deanne looked at me.

“That my next three paychecks are going to go towards cleaning up that mess?” I ventured.

“Well, yes,” she said, “but with my arm out of commission for at least a month, I can’t hold my blaster, let alone a beaker. I’ll need someone to help with my experiments, and Michael’s internship ended yesterday.”

I blinked. “W-what?”

Deanne grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Would you like the job?”

* * *

“Cal, sweetheart, you gotta stop this. You’re gettin’ tears on the pies.”

“Sorry, Sanchez. Just…yeah. I’m OK,” I said. “I’m just really going to miss this place.”

Lilu looked at me from her place by the counter. “Uncle, give her a break.”

“Yeah, I know. But these pizzas won’t deliver themselves, and my nephew is useless. Can’t find his way out of a paper bag.” He shook his head. “Gonna miss you, Cal. You’re moving up in the world, but don’t forget us, alright?”

I took the pizzas and shoved them into my hot bag. “I’ll never get the smell of pizza out of the upholstery, Sanchez. And I never want to. Thanks, dude. For everything.” I hugged him, and Lila, and I strode out into the cold. The snow had mostly melted, but even though winter had mostly ended, there was just enough frost in the air to nip at you.

Large anchovy and mushroom. And two orders of cinnamon sticks.

I put my car into gear and drove, hands numb on the steering wheel. I parked, pulled the boxes from the bag, and took a few deep breaths. Then I opened the door and walked up to the building.

I didn’t even have a chance to press the buzzer before the door opened.

For a long moment, we both stood there, not saying anything. Deanne’s lab coat was impeccable again, and her eyes sparkled. Her broken arm was snug against her chest in a sling, and she’d already somehow managed to draw a crooked TARDIS on the cast in bright blue ink.

“I, uhh. Reporting for duty. And I brought lunch,” I said.

“Awesomesauce. Just in time, too. My experiment on ectoplasm’s electrical resistance needs attention. Let’s get you a lab coat and begin.”

I nodded. The ghost of happiness uncurled in my chest, and stretched.

 

* * *

Originally published in ROAR 9, 2018

About the Author

Searska GreyRaven has been writing ever since an eccentric sorceress was brave enough to teach them. They hava been previously published in several anthologies, most recently in ROAR 9, Dissident Signals, and CLAW 1, and have had stories nominated for both the Cóyotl and Leo Literary awards. They currently make their lair among the loons of Minnesota with their partner, along with a growing hoard of books guarded by a legion of plastic dinosaurs.  They can be found on Twitter (SearskaGreyRvn) and post occasionally on SoFurry (Searska_GreyRaven).

 

 

by Gabriel Robinson

“Outside the hole the cat was waiting. The mouse waited too.”

A mouse was very sleepy. He could not sleep for thinking of the cat who prowled outside the hole in the baseboard. Sometimes the cat poked in a paw, lying on his shoulder to curl his claws upward in a playful way that made the mouse’s heart shudder. Sometimes he went away. He could be gone for hours. Those times were the worst, because the mouse never knew when he would return. He preferred the certainty that the cat was out there, with his fangs, pacing and watching the hole.

* * *

His mother didn’t understand. “There are plenty of other openings in this apartment building,” she told him. “Passages, portals, doors, holes. Why sit by the one where the cat is sure to come?”

The mouse could not explain.

“Mrs. Santana in 6B is having her poker night,” his mother offered. “She never vacuums after. She’s got no cat. Why don’t we go there together once it gets quiets and she turns on the TV?”

But the mouse didn’t want to go with his mother.

“I’ll bring you back a crumb of Ruffles,” she said sadly.

* * *

The mouse’s brother thought he understood.

“I like it too,” he confessed. “The risk. Makes you feel alive.”

The mouse nodded sleepily. His brother crouched beside him, nose working, ears up. They heard the heavy, unmistakable thud of the cat landing on the computer desk, where it liked to take the sun. The brother waited, eyes gleaming, then darted out in a crazy slurry of legs and tail. He slalomed under table legs, turned a corner, and streaked back across the rug. The cat’s head moved. Its gaze fixed on its prey, hind legs bunched…

It leapt and slid, punching its great paw into the wall, missing by a hair the mouse’s brother, who skated to a stop, panting hard. The mouse watched in paralyzed horror as the cat groped in their darkness for long moments, then finally withdrew.

“Gets your blood flowing, I’ll tell you.”  His brother grinned.

The mouse could only nod as his brother preened himself. Moments later his brother grew restless and whisked off.

Outside the hole the cat was waiting. The mouse waited too.

Finally the cat moved. It plopped over on its side, stretching in a nonchalant way against the baseboard, as though it had decided, for no particular reason, to relax there. Its body blocked the light. The mouse could hear the rasp of its tongue as it licked its paw, the deep rumble of its purr. He all but held his breath. After a time the purring faded as the cat slipped into sleep.

* * *

Slowly, slowly the mouse crept closer, until he could press his body against the warm body of the feline, and close his eyes.

 

* * *

About the Author

Gabriel Robinson was raised in West Virginia by hippies and Siamese cats. She studied history of religions at Bard College and University of Chicago, and has worked as a waitress, adjunct professor, used book dealer’s assistant, academic editor, art supply store clerk, documentary film researcher, and contest judge. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her partner, Gavin, and Otto, who appears to be a seven-year-old human child but is actually a trans-dimensional robot from the planet Janet.

by Divyasri Krishnan

“Were we in the stars yet? Why was it all black?”

Four of us were bred for the mission. We were of good Perognathus longimembris lab stock, sturdy, banister-brown, able to go 148 hours without drinking water, which ensured our feces would be as concentrated as possible. We had never been outside the silver grate of our cage. We had never tunneled in soil that didn’t taste like metal. But that was okay; we were special. We were astronauts.

They introduced us to the humans a month before launch. The big one, like a long stick, didn’t take much to us. But the elderly one loved us and spoke to us often, even when the scientists got mad.

“Excited, Fe?” he asked me, peering his big wet eye between our bars. He didn’t wait for my response. “In a couple weeks, you’ll get to see the stars with me. Not many mice can say that, eh?”

One of the scientists raised his head from his clipboard. “Who’s Fe?”

The elderly astronaut pointed a knobby finger at me, and I cocked my head.

“Oh,” said the scientist dismissively, “you mean A3305.”

The elderly one had odd names for us, names that made him sing and laugh when he said them together. “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum,” he’d chant, and all four of us would raise our brown noses. His creased face would split in half, revealing white, which we knew meant joy.

The four of us knew our roles, had always known them. I was the thinker. A3326, or Fi, was the brawn, our biggest and strongest brother. Fo, A3352, was a musical sort. And then there was Fum, A3356, our loveable coward. The scientists knew our natures, knew our harmony. We were four. No less, no more.

And then the fifth came.

A3400, the scientists called him, with sparks and bright things in their voices. The wild card. He wasn’t from the lab, like us, but from the Outside, where the other mice lived.

“Because our sample’s hardly random,” a scientist explained to the astronauts. “There are a lot of factors that separate lab-grown mice and wild mice. The effects of microgravity may very well be entirely different.”

The elderly one picked up the fifth mouse, too high for us to see. “Aren’t you a darling one?” he said. “I’ll call you Phooey.”

* * *

From the beginning, Phooey was different. He was the wrong brown. His eyes were too bright and too quick, and he hated the cage, spending all his time scrabbling at it with his claws and teeth rather than eating or burrowing. And he said the most terrible things.

“You’re all fools,” he declared one night. “You eat right from the hands of those humans. Don’t you know they’re evil?”

Fum whimpered.

I pinned back my ears at Phooey, summoning all my sternness. “The humans are good to us. They take care of us.”

“They’re taking us to the stars,” Fo added. “Where no mouse has gone before.”

Phooey shook his head in scorn. “They’re only taking you there so they can study you.”

“Of course they study us,” I told him. “We’re special. They’ve studied us all our lives.”

Phooey scampered up a pile of loose dirt, scattering it everywhere, and lifted his paws imperiously to the sky. For a moment, he was silent, staring down at us in the dark. Then he spoke. “Where I come from, humans kill mice like us.”

He said this often, telling us horror stories of big shrieking machines, silver jaws that snapped your spine and tail, sharp smells that cut up your snout and curdled your insides. For three nights, Fum was too frightened to sleep.

I wouldn’t let him pull this again. “Maybe your humans did. Ours don’t.”

Phooey fixed me with one bright eye. “All humans are the same, Fe. I thought you, at least, would recognize that.”

But he was wrong. I had known many humans, and they were all different. Some scientists held us too hard, while others couldn’t stand to touch us. Some were kind like the elderly astronaut, speaking to us in low, cooing voices about their lives at home, their newborns, the music they were listening to.

I couldn’t imagine any of them killing us. Some were crueler than others, yes. But killing was a different story altogether.

“You’ll see,” I said at last. “When they take us to the stars, you’ll see.”

* * *

Two days before the launch, the scientists cracked open the top of our cage and plucked us out one by one. Fum squealed and covered his eyes, but the rest of us were calm. Even Phooey said nothing, though his eyes dulled and his head hung low over the scientist’s fingers.

“Chin up,” I told him.

He didn’t look at me. “You’re a fool, Fe.”

They placed each of us in a clear tube filled with soil, grass, and a heaping supply of food. The quarters were cramped, but that, as the elderly astronaut had explained, was the nature of spaceflight.

A small container inside my tube held a store of yellow powder. I regarded it curiously.

“The little guy’s confused,” the elderly astronaut remarked. He turned to one of the scientists, who was screwing the top on Fi’s tube. “Is that potassium superoxide in there?”

The scientist nodded. “It’ll soak up the carbon dioxide and keep them alive.”

I pressed my snout against the glass, looking through into Phooey’s tube, where he slumped on a leaf. “Alive,” I mouthed, triumphant.

He didn’t respond.

* * *

I didn’t see the launch, but I felt it. The scientists had placed our individual tubes in an aluminum container and locked it up, so all I knew was blackness, even as a force greater than any human hand dragged at my skin and shuddered my bones. I curled into the dirt to keep from trembling. Even the wet, warm scent of soil and the familiar tang of metal couldn’t comfort me.

The feeling continued, never abating. I worried for the other mice. Fi was strong, he would be okay. Even Fo might manage. But could Fum take such harsh handling? I wasn’t used to being away from him, unable to soothe him.

And what of Phooey? Had he ever experienced something like this? Would he be okay?

As much as I didn’t like him, it was my job to take care of the lab mice. He had been brought into the lab, into our cage. I had an obligation to him.

All at once it ended. Instead of the terrible, crushing weight, there was now no weight at all, a change so dramatic it seemed to rearrange the organs inside of me. I floated in a cloud of soil and darkness. I could see nothing.

Were we in the stars yet? Why was it all black?

Dirt got in my nostrils, and I sneezed. The force propelled me back, and I bumped into the side of the tube, cold and slick against my back. My claws scrabbled for purchase, but there was none to be had.

Of course I couldn’t see the stars. They were outside my tube. I just had to wait for someone to open it.

Someone would open it. Wouldn’t they?

Phooey would hate this. He had complained unceasingly about the restrictive area of our cage, lamenting at the loss of the great big Outside.

“You don’t know what you’re missing out there,” he always said. “Entire fields of green as far as the eye can see, bigger than so many humans, bigger than everything. And light everywhere. And everything singing.”

He wouldn’t be able to take this darkness, this closeness. It would kill him.

I scraped my claws against the tub, feeling them slide off. The elderly astronaut would come for me. He had promised me the stars. And once I was out, I’d get the others out, too, and show Phooey that he had been wrong all along.

* * *

The darkness didn’t end.

Stars are yellow, the astronaut had said. Like the sun. Sometimes they are red or blue or purple or a thousand colors at once.

I didn’t know if I’d even seen a thousand colors before.

Was Fum still alive? Was he eating? And the others, how were they coping?

Phooey, what do you say?

* * *

I chewed a seed, lost interest, let the wet glop of it drift out of my mouth. I missed the elderly astronaut. I missed the light and the white and the space. I missed burrowing, which was impossible here, because even if I could stay down long enough to do so, my burrow would hardly have gone an inch. We used to tuck down in our holes when we were tired of the light. There was no place to hide from the dark.

* * *

Phooey told us about the sun. We knew the sun, because it streamed through the window in the lab every day, but Phooey said that wasn’t really the sun, just a little piece of it.

Sun like one of the big lab floodlights turned on across the world. Inescapable. Warm even in the heart of winter, searing, pressing against your back and digging under your fur.

The sun was a star. The stars were many suns. I hadn’t even seen the sun. How would I have known the stars?

* * *

Lives passed. The dark remained.

I floated in limbo, dirt and food mingling with each other. Little dried pieces of strawberry caught on my whiskers and constituted my only meal. I couldn’t be bothered to search through the soil for the rest of it.

In the corner, the potassium superoxide glowed faintly, but even its light was not enough to cut through the total blackness. The pile grew gradually smaller. Keeping me alive, I knew, because the scientist said so. But I wondered.

* * *

I wondered.

* * *

We returned. I knew this because of the feeling, that terrible weight and pulling, which woke me out of a sleep that held me for what felt like years.

The darkness continued for a while after that, and then there was noise. Clatterings and voices, shouting professional-sounding things to each other. I heard the elderly astronaut congratulating someone.

The top of the aluminum container clicked and lifted up. Light cut in like a knife. I shrieked and curled into myself, into the dirt that fell on top of me when we stopped floating, trying to shield my eyes.

Dimly, I recognized the irony. All I had wanted was light. And now that it was here, all I wanted was relief.

“There you all are!” said the elderly astronaut. He peered down at me with his big eyes, his face filled with whiteness. “How was the trip, huh? Not too bad?”

I uncovered my eyes, but I couldn’t look at him. Instead, I looked straight to where the other tubes sat next to me. Only inches away, all this time.

Fum shuddered against the side of the tube. Fi and Fo were curled up like me, paws over their eyes.

Of us all, Phooey was the calmest. Quiet, still. He lay flat on the dirt, snout pointing up, and on his too-brown face was an expression of such peace I had never known on him, a harmony with the world after so much fighting.

I waited for him to open his eyes. To look at me and smile. I knew what he’d say.

I told you so.

“Damn,” said one of the scientists, looking at Phooey.

The elderly astronaut looked too. “Is he dead?”

“Seems so. That’s a shame.”

The elderly astronaut shrugged. “Well, now you know the difference between lab-grown and wild mice in microgravity.”

“That’s true.” The scientist grinned. “And four out of five isn’t bad.”

“Not bad at all. You gonna dissect their feces?”

The scientist nodded. “We’ll start there, but we’re really interested in the biological impact. On skeletons, chemical composition, organ function, you know.”

I told you so.

“Ah.” The elderly astronaut winced. “You’re gonna cut them up.”

“We have to, Captain. That’s always been the plan.

“I know, I know…”

“I warned you not to name them.”

The elderly astronaut looked at me. His eyes had once been as familiar to me as my own. Suddenly I could no longer tell if they were kind or cruel, warm or winter-cold, as I had once been able to do. Now they were too strange for me to read. Too human to me.

“Thanks for your service, Fe,” he said to me. “And I’m sorry.”

And then it was only us. The four good mice, soon to be dead, and the wild one who already was.

 

* * *

About the Author

Divyasri Krishnan is the author of PRIMORDIAL KNOWLEDGE (Bottlecap Press). Her work is published or forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Hobart Pulp, Tasavvur, and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net finalist, and she reads for The Adroit Journal. She studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

by Dana Vickerson

“Mama sat with me by the windowsill a lot when Daddy was sick.  She told me to watch for a ship that would take us home and make him better.”

If Mama doesn’t get up soon, we’re going to miss our chance to get off Mars.

Mama is a human, but I call her “Mama” because she says I am her baby kitty and her special boy.  She is sleeping, but I am hungry.

It’s a delicate art, waking up your human. If you’re too eager, they’ll likely get cross with you, and while Mama is a sweet and kind soul, I do not like to see her cross.  If you are too gentle, though, your human is likely to continue their blissful sleep while you sit on the floor with a rumble in your belly. 

So, like most mornings, I start today by walking back and forth across my human’s pillow.  This is less startling than just going right for patting her face.  The soft rhythm of my paws around her head signals to Mama that it’s time to start the process of bringing her consciousness to the here and now, where my kibble lives.

She gently pushes me off her head, which disappoints me, but she scratches between my ears, which I love.  I lay beside her head purring, showing her that I appreciate the scratches and she can take her time.

She rolls over to lay her head near my furry belly and continues to scratch me, now under my chin, which I also love.  I purr for what feels like an eternity.

I gently pat her on the face a few times.

Pat.  Pat.

Pat.Pat.Pat.

Mama rolls away from me.  This usually doesn’t happen.  My Mama loves me and is eager to provide me with the proper nutrients I need.  Mama has just been more sleepy than normal lately.

I survey the room for anything that might help aid the process.  Mama has gotten wise to me, and instead of leaving glasses of water by her bed, she’s taken to closed top water bottles.  They make a fantastic sound going off the nightstand, but they don’t make a mess, so Mama usually ignores it.

I spy the empty space next to Mama and decide it’s the perfect place to stage the next part of my plan:  looking so adorable Mama cannot resist me.  Bringing in the big guns, as humans like to say.

I flop over to Daddy’s side.  He is my other human.

Daddy’s side is empty, so there’s plenty of space for me to perform.  I start by meowing loudly.  This alerts Mama that she should pay attention and I’m about to do something adorable.

She rolls back over to me and opens her eyes.  They are very red and puffy.  This concerns me.  Surely she has slept too much and now very much needs to get out of bed.  It’s not only my hunger that will benefit from getting her up, but Mama’s own sake as well.  I meow at her to let her know that she has done a good job rolling over and is now in for a treat.

I flop onto my back and show her my full belly, which is white and very fluffy because of my long hair.  Most of my coloring is black, which goes very well with my bright green eyes, I must say, but my belly and paws are white.  Mama says it looks like I walked in paint.  I do not know what “paint” is, but it always pleases her when she says it so it must be something good.

I stretch my legs out as far as I can, arching my back and poking my belly out.  Mama smiles.  She smiles!  I have not seen Mama do that in days.  This makes me very happy.

Mama reaches her long, lovely fingers out and begins to scratch my belly.  This almost makes me forget I’m hungry.  I love belly scratches.  Mama knows just where to go, too, scratching in that glorious space where my front legs meet my chest.

I purr so loudly that Mama says, “That’s my good boy, Pho.”

I watch Mama as she smiles.  Any minute now she’s going to throw off the covers and exclaim, “Who’s hungry!” Then she will not only give me kibble but the gooey yummy fishy food that comes in the little silver packets.  She does not give me those every day, so on the days I get those I know I am a very, very good boy.

Mama’s eyes drift over to the empty pillow and her smile fades.  She stops rubbing me and rolls back over, pulling the covers up tightly around her head.  Drat.

I roll over and curl up on Daddy’s empty pillow, thinking over my next steps.  The belly rubs generally have the effect of getting Mama up, but today it would seem that I need to get creative.  Drastic, maybe.

My tummy rumbles.

Daddy’s pillow still smells of him.  There is the scent of sweat and an underlying bad smell.  Something my nose does not like.  Mama seems to like it though.  She fell asleep hugging Daddy’s pillow last night.  I can smell her on it, too.  Salty and sweet.  Perhaps she misses Daddy?  I know I do.  He gave the best chin scritchies.

I have an idea.  I walk over the giant duvet lump that is Mama and step gingerly over to her end table, where she keeps her impenetrable water bottle, as well as a stack of books — a fact Daddy used to make fun of her for, when everything in their lives was what he called “digital” — and a photo of her and Daddy.

I like this photo, not just because I am in it and I am a beautiful and handsome boy.  Daddy is holding me in one hand, lifting me up to Mama’s delight.  I am not much more than a ball of black fluff with bright green eyes, but they love me.  This picture was taken back on Phobos, the moon for which I am named, where we lived for many years.  Mama and Daddy were happier there, I think.  We were around more people, and there were more cats.  I am the only cat here on the surface, I think.  Mama and Daddy were not supposed to bring me to the  outpost, but they said they weren’t going down to the dusty, rusty surface of Mars without their baby.  I did not like the descent.  It was scary and made me feel very sick, but Daddy cradled me in his suit and whispered to me the whole time.

I look over at Mama, and her eyes are closed.  She seems to have fallen back asleep, even though I know the bright sun has been up for a long time.  I need to get her up, because the room smells faintly of sick humans and sweat, and Mama does not seem to want to groom herself.  I groom myself often, because I’m a very pretty boy.

The room smelled worse before Daddy left, like something on the verge of death.  I did not like to come into the dark room where Daddy was.

I arch my back and rub it along the picture, which is what Mama calls an antique because it is made of metal and glass, not a slick screen like everything else in our outpost.  It feels good to rub the picture frame with my back.  Maybe Mama will see me rubbing it and look at the picture and remember I am her cute and good boy and will feed me.

The picture frame moves as I rub it, then it falls off the nightstand and onto the floor.  My ears hear the crack of the glass and the sharp intake of Mama’s breath as her eyes pop open.  They are red and dull and very angry.

“Pho!” she says as she sits up, her hair disheveled and dirty.

The anger washes down her face and all that’s left is sadness when she looks at the picture frame face down on the floor.  I jump down to sniff it, and she lifts it.

Mama begins to cry, and I know I have not been a good boy, though now she is sitting up and she will feed me.

She stands up and walks toward the door to the living area, and I go ahead of her.  I turn to look, though, and she closes the door.

I meow at Mama, hoping she will come out and feed me, but she doesn’t.

I sit and look at the door, and I can hear Mama crying.

I am sad.

I am hungry.

I lay on the floor in contemplation.

Sick of moping, I head into the kitchen of our living quarters and sniff my bowl.  There is no kibble left, but it smells like food and that makes my tummy grumble louder.  Mama keeps the food in a cabinet, but all of the cabinets are metal and impossible for me to open.  Back on Phobos, we had a little robot in the kitchen who would feed me.  I liked the little robot.  His name was Kiko.

We could not bring Kiko to the outpost because Mama and Daddy said we had to pack light and that Mars would have everything we needed, but when we got here they were sad to find that the outpost was dirty and the tech was outdated.  There was no Kiko.

I hop on the counter and sniff around, hoping Mama has left something out that I can eat, but the shiny metal counters are clean.  I have not seen Mama eat in a few days, so there are not even food items on the ground I can sniff.

There are several orange bottles on the counter that hold very small things Mama calls “pills.”  These are for Daddy.  He started taking them after we got to Mars.  Mama and Daddy talked many nights about how Mars was making him sick and that they should go home.  This was exciting to me, because I do not like the outpost and I very much liked our home on Phobos, though I did not want to get back on the big, loud ship.  I would do it, though, if it meant we could go home.

Mama sat with me by the windowsill a lot when Daddy was sick.  She told me to watch for a ship that would take us home and make him better.  She said they were coming any day.

I bat at the pill bottles, knocking a few off the counter, hoping the sound will wake up Mama.  I wait, but she does not come.

The sun streams through the large window in the kitchen, and I hop over to the deep window sill to warm myself.  The sun is very bright down here, and I like to lay in the warmth and look out, though there is not much to see.

Everything is red and dusty, and I’m not allowed to go outside.  I would like to go outside, but Mama says I cannot.  From my window, I can see the long metal walkway we went through when we landed.  It took us from where the big, loud ship landed to our outpost.

There is a ship there now.  It is not currently loud. It is very quiet.  It showed up right after Daddy left, and a few humans in big, puffy suits and fish bowls on their heads came out and tried to come into the outpost, but Mama yelled at them and did not open the door.  They called back to her that she needed to let them in and come with them.  There was something called a dust storm approaching, and it was dangerous.

I do not like dust.  It gets in my fur.  There is a lot of dust in our outpost, because it is very old.

After the puffy people went back to their ship, Mama told me that she didn’t care about the dust storm, that she and I would be fine, and that we couldn’t leave Daddy.  This confused me, because I could not find Daddy.

She got into bed after that and has not left.

The kitchen in the outpost is not very big, so I jump onto the cabinets to get up high.  I like being up high.  It helps me think.  I need to get back into the bedroom.

There is one way, but I have only done it once and I got very dirty and I did not like it.  I rub my back on the dusty metal grate in the wall above the cabinets.  It flops open with a clang, and I wait to see if Mama will come at the sound alone.

She doesn’t.

Inside the grate is a metal hallway that snakes through the outpost, which I do not like to go in because it is so dirty.  Some of the dust is red, and it turns my fur a rusty color that I do not like, and it tastes bad when I clean myself.

I hesitate.

I am a brave boy.  I go into the metal hallway.

The metal moves underneath my paws, and I do not like it, but I keep going.  There are many ways to go, but I can smell Mama and the Daddy smell, so I follow it.  I stop at the grate above their room.  I can see Mama, who is in bed holding the picture frame.

I walk over the grate, hoping it will take me down to Mama, but nothing happens.  I stand on the grate and again nothing.  Frustrated, I flop down hard.

The grate flips open and I fall onto the bed, onto Mama, who yelps loudly as dust dances down around the room.  The dust is pretty, even though it tastes bad and is dirty.

“Pho! What are you doing?”

I meow at Mama, who is looking around at the mess.  Now she will get up and feed me and clean the dust and maybe we will get on the big ship and go home.

I meow again, but instead of getting up, Mama just lays back on her pillow and looks up at the open grate in the ceiling.

Mama is not getting up.

I want to go lay on Mama, but I am very dirty, so I hop off the bed onto the metal shelf with all the buttons that make all the things in the room work.  Sometimes I like to walk on the buttons and see if I can open the big black things over the windows and see outside.  I do not want to do that today, though, because Mama will be mad.

I sit down to clean myself.

Mama is still staring at the ceiling.

I lift my leg to get to a particularly fluffy piece of dirt, and as I do I roll over on several buttons that make fun sounds as I press them.  I flop onto my back and roll around, feeling the chunky keys massage my spine.  I like the buttons.

I am startled when I hear Daddy’s voice.  The big screen in the wall has turned on, and there is Daddy.  Mama must be startled, too, because she’s sitting up, staring at Daddy.

I meow at Daddy and jump on the bed.

“Hi Darling,” Daddy is saying.  “I know you’re probably in pretty bad shape right about now.  I know I would be if I’d just lost you.”

Mama starts crying.  I curl up in her lap, and she lays a still hand on my back.  She does not care that I am still dirty.  I purr loudly to comfort her.

“I know it will probably be awhile before you open these vids, but I wanted to make them for you so you’d have something of me after I’m gone.  First, Rhea, let me just say how much I love you.  You too, Pho.  I’m sure you’re around there somewhere.”

Mama scratches behind my ear at the mention of my name, and when she looks down, it’s like she’s finally seeing me.

Daddy keeps talking on the vid.  His eyes are dark and sunken, and he looks very sick, but he’s smiling very wide.

“It’s too late for me to return to Phobos.  We both know that.  But you should go, my love.  Take Pho and go home when the ship comes.  I know you, and I know you’re probably sitting there shaking your head and thinking ‘Oh, that Dane, he’s so fantastic, and I can never live a day without him.’”  Daddy cracks a wide smile, and Mama laughs.  “But seriously, you need to go.  The comps have mapped the storm, and the outpost won’t survive it.  You won’t survive it.  Pho won’t survive it.  I won’t be there for you guys, but I need you to be there for each other.”

Mama squeezes me and I purr louder.

“So, Rhea, when the ship comes, I need you to get on it.  I’m sorry I can’t go with you, but I’m dust in the burn shoot.  You can still make it out.  Please.  For me.  I love you, babe.  Take care of Pho.”

The vid goes black, but there are more.  Mama and I sit quietly as she pulls up each one.  Some are him talking to us again, things we should do before we leave, things he wants us to do back on Phobos.  Some are old vids of the three of us.  These make Mama sad but also very happy.

After the last vid, Mama looks down at me.

“Hi, bud.”

I meow.

“Ready for breakfast?”

I hop down off the bed and go stand at the closed door to the living quarters.  Mama finally gets out of bed, avoiding the pieces of glass from the broken picture frame.

Her movements are stiff as she crosses the room, but she opens the door and follows me to the kitchen, where we eat breakfast and pack for our journey home.

 

* * *

About the Author

Dana Vickerson is an architect and writer living in Dallas, though she’s most comfortable deep in the woods where she loves to sit and listen to the symphony of nature. When not crafting buildings or stories, Dana can be found analyzing horror movies with her husband or making elaborate paper dolls for her daughters. Her short fiction has appeared in Trembling with Fear and Tales to Terrify, and is forthcoming in Dark Matter Presents: Human Monsters and other anthologies. You can find her on Twitter @dmvickerson.

by Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden

“You don’t fit. These days, people want everything to be discrete and sharply defined: on/off, male/female, good/evil. You’re an analogue cat in a digital world.”

When you wake, you wait a few moments for your eyes to come online. You can manage without them, but it’s pleasant to lie in the dark warmth and purr while the blurred pixels slowly crystallise into your world. You stretch a striped arm and extend your claws until the pink quick shows, then pick up your other arm and lock it into position. Stretch. Extend. The joints move with ease and the claws, opaque white on this paw, click smoothly in and out. It’s time to begin.

You’re a second-generation Bengal. Your parents were grown in the wombs of human women who needed the money or wanted to do something shocking, but you were conceived the natural way, if there can be anything natural about the tangle of DNA that makes up a Pet, your sire and dam carefully selected by your breeder.

It’s at training school, which you and your classmates call Kittygarten without knowing why it’s funny, that you notice the difference between you and the others. You think more deeply, ask more questions, get in trouble more often. At the end of the course, you’re ready to go off with your new owners. The fad for Bots is over, and it’s all about Pets now. You were sold before you even opened your eyes, to a family with three boisterous kids. You put up with having your tail and ears pulled in return for their uncomplicated love. With the parents, it’s different; you’re expected to keep your golden fur groomed nicely and mince ahead of them on a lead so they can show off to those who have a less expensive breed, a mere Bot, or no companion at all. They have a chip put in your arm so they can trace you if you go missing.

You miss your friends from Kittygarten, don’t see other Pets except for brief meetings on walks. The neighbours bring their black cocker round sometimes, and he’s alright, but, again, he doesn’t think like you do. You were the pick of your litter and everything about you is perfect, from the delicate tufts of fur on your ears to the apricot fluff of your belly. Each spot and stripe is regular and correctly sized.

You go blind when you’re not quite full-grown, a breed fault, and your owners take you back for a refund. The kids protest, but are quelled by promises of a dog Pet next time. The breeder is kind, just has you neutered and throws you out on the street, rather than put you to sleep. You survive on wits and whiskers for five long years, until your golden, patterned coat is masked by dirt and your perfect ears are nicked.

By now the third generation of Pets has come along. They’re smarter than their parents, many of them crossbreeds sprung into life without a careful breeding programme, and they want to be recognised as people. The Bots take up the call, as if they’ve been waiting all this time for someone else to kick off. There’s activism, and you’re a part of it until it gets too violent for your tastes.

Victory comes at last, and with it new rights, like the right to work, and the surgery that will give you new eyes. The sponsored ads that go with free healthcare are a small price to pay for vision. Not just vision, either; there’s night sight, close-up, and Cloud access, all snug behind your eyelids and hooked with hairsbreadth wires to the living circuitry of your brain. You’re not quite a Pet any more, but not quite a Bot either; something in between, non-binary. You see the world from twin cameras hidden behind green lenses of one-way glass. You don’t mind so much, these days, that the breeder stole your sex years ago. You pick a new set of pronouns to go with the changes in your body, and a new name: Tozer. You’re the Analogue Cat.

Now you find that the firsties and the second-gens are an embarrassment the third generation hopes will die off quickly, and sometimes helps to get there. Most of the first-gen are already gone, their lives short, simple, and largely happy. The seconds start to follow but you hang on, whether by chance or by some freak of genes. At thirty-eight you feel used up, your striped and spotted fur losing its plushy thickness and the skin loose around your shrinking neck, but you hang on. You’re not sure what for. You don’t fit. These days, people want everything to be discrete and sharply defined: on/off, male/female, good/evil.

You’re an analogue cat in a digital world.

One night, as you take the moving walkway home from your sorting job at the recycling plant, popup ads flickering at the edges of your vision, a group of fourth-gen dogs walks by. They’re young, have never known a world where Pets are promised to an owner before they’re even born. One of them pretends to stumble and grabs your left arm, feeling under the bicep with a thumb. Then everything goes dark; they’ve used a jammer so you can’t call for help over the Cloud, and it’s knocked your eyes offline.

“Liberation!” you hear, and smell the booze on dog breath. You hiss and struggle, feel your claws connect with a nose, then one of the others has your paws pinned behind your back. There’s a stab in your arm, a flood of warmth, and pain so sharp you fall and can’t move. It takes you far too long to pass out, and when you do, the uncaring walkway carries your body onwards.

You wake with a stump where your arm used to be. The dog vigilantes hacked out the chip your old owners left there, and the wound became infected. You look from your stump to the Bot standing beside your bed, waiting for you to come round. It was this Bot who found you dying on the walkway, stopped the bleeding and carried you to hospital. This Bot has checked back every day while you lay sucking in air and fluids, as your system hovered between reboot and shutdown.

Her name’s Min.

Your new arm is emblazoned with advertising logos, but you don’t mind. It’s stronger than the old one and can feel no pain. It’s resistant to heat and cold. You soon get used to working it, and a lot of the time you forget it hasn’t always been part of you. But it’s the other paw, the warm, soft one with its bundles of fragile nerve endings, that you slip into Min’s three-fingered hand one afternoon soon after your release from hospital. She takes it gently in a grip that can exert meganewtons of pressure, touched in more ways than one.

Analogue Pet and digital Bot have a lot in common; like you, Min has made decisions about who and what she is, and she’s had her body modified to suit the female identity she’s chosen. Her torso is cylindrical, the glossy red of lipstick. When you sit together in the park, her chest is warm against your body, and something deep inside it ticks like a slow purr. Because of the Cloud link behind your eyes, you and she can talk silently, for hours, even when you’re apart. You hadn’t realised how lonely you’d been until you weren’t.

You get a better job, working for a space programme newly reactivated as the planet’s resources run low. Just cleaning up at first; then, when they realise your eyes can overlay blueprints and instructions, building components. Nobody makes Bots any more, and few people will voluntarily have their eyes taken out, so your attributes are rare and valuable—almost as much as a pedigree Bengal once was. The fourthers working at the programme treat you with an awkward respect, even though they’ve had the university education you could never have imagined for yourself. Pretty soon, nobody will count Pet generations any more.

You become even more valuable the day a fire starts in the laboratory next door to your office. The sprinklers are having no effect, but you reach out into the white heat with your prosthetic arm, flicking switches off and grabbing burning material away so the flames die for lack of fuel. You lose half your whiskers, and can’t wear the arm for a week because the heat it conducted has blistered your stump, but at the hospital you discover the programme has paid for an ad-free upgrade to your eyes, and when you come back to work the Director herself summons you to her office to thank you personally. She’s run disaster analysis, and you’ve saved the project from losing precious time, money, and perhaps people. She’s looking at you thoughtfully, and you wonder if she’s having trouble with your pronouns, but when she speaks, it’s of the programme.

She tells you about the mission: about the star the scientists have identified as having the ability to support life. They think there are planets. They can’t tell for sure. But once they get someone out there, get them on the surface of a new world, they can send a signal back with the coordinates, and start the processes that will ensure food and shelter for the first wave of colonists. You ask why not an unmanned probe, and she explains that nobody knows what’s out there, so no computer can be programmed to deal with all the possible eventualities. It takes the living to improvise.

A fresh start for anyone who wants it, she says. A society in which all are equal, truly equal. You ask what the problem is.

She describes the spacecraft, how the process is automated except for one crucial stage when controls must be operated. How the terrible forces involved fill human eyes with red mist, and render human hands too heavy to move. She conjures up clumsy, big-boned bodies pressed flat against the floor, and inflexible spines snapping. But perhaps you, Tozer… she says. And you feel your tail twitch with excitement in a way it hasn’t for years.

Then she tells you how long it will take. For you, a couple of weeks; for Earth, a couple of centuries. In that time, they’ll build bigger and better craft, overcome the technical obstacles, and get ready for mass transportation. But someone has to go first. Because you can’t send thousands of men, women, and children into space without knowing what awaits them. Send one Pet, though, and they’re a hero whatever happens.

You mention your age—you know no other second-gens still living—and she says, bluntly, that you need only survive long enough to send the signal; then she relents, and tells you your medical records indicate you’ve got plenty of time.

You say you’ll need to discuss it with someone first. But when you talk to Min over the Cloud, she can tell your heart is already up among the stars, doing something nobody else has done or can do. Discovering a world that’s yours from the start.

And now here you are, waking up on the cusp of a new life. You’re bound to be disorientated; that’s why this recording is playing for you. And if it’s playing, then you’re alive. You’ve reached your destination. There’s a planet below you that will be your new home.

You remember it all now, don’t you? I know you’ll succeed in your mission. You’re the Analogue Cat, neither Pet nor Bot, and you can do anything. And once you’ve landed, set up your camp, and sent the signal on its long journey home, there’s another task for you.

Weight and space were too critical to take along so much as a gram of surplus, but the flash memory in your eyes holds a set of blueprints, and a compressed backup of my memories and personality. Whether you salvage scrap from the capsule or use the equipment you’ve been given to mine and work the metals, eventually you can make a new body and install me in it. However it works, I’ll still be your Min, your only Min. I shut myself down back on Earth the day you left; I didn’t want to live without you.

I’m waiting, Tozer. I love you.

 

* * *

Originally published in The Furry Future, 2015

About the Author

Alice Dryden writes stories and poems about talking animals. Most of these are published in the furry fandom under the name Huskyteer, but occasionally one escapes into the wild. She edited the Furry Megapack for Wildside Press, and in 2019 she was Guest of Honor at Fur the ‘More 007: Furry Never Dies. When not being a dog on the internet, she enjoys motorcycling, gin, karate and open water swimming, though not all at the same time. Twitter: @Huskyteer

by Anna Madden

The moon is fat with silver the night men attack with metal teeth held in their hands.

The stars are holes punched out of a black sky, arrows pouring down. I flee the torrent, the biting sticks like burrs between keeled scales. The air tastes of salt and danger.

The nest is lost, but your egg is safe. I carry it within my maw.

I fear you’ll be born a fool, like me. A mooncalf hatchling, or a shining new dawn? There are so few safe places left. Our world dies one wingbeat at a time, but still, I fly.

 

* * *

About the Author

Anna Madden lives in North Texas, where the prairie reaches long tallgrass fingers toward the woods. Her fiction has appeared in Hexagon SF Magazine, PodCastle, Orion’s Belt, and elsewhere. She has an English degree from the University of Missouri—Kansas City. In free time she gardens, mountain bikes, and makes stained glass. Follow her on Twitter @anna_madden_ or visit her website at annamadden.com.

Wingbearer is a new full-color graphic novel written by Marjorie Liu, with illustration by Teny Issakhanian. “Zuli is extraordinary — she just doesn’t realize it yet. Raised by mystical bird spirits in the branches of the Great Tree, she’s never ventured beyond this safe haven. She’s never had to. Until now… When a sinister force threatens the life-giving magic of the tree, Zuli, along with her guardian owl, Frowly, must get to the root of it. So begins an adventure bigger than anything Zuli could’ve ever imagined — one that will bring her, along with some newfound friends, face-to-face with an ancient dragon, the so-called Witch-Queen, and most surprisingly of all: Her true identity.”

image c. 2022 Quill Tree Books