In my dream a fox who's face is shadows and who's eyes are a sly, amber glint flips over a stone. The reality that exists beneath it is disgusting, brown and rotting and crawling with bugs.
"Do you see?" he asks, one eyebrow arched as the shadows flicker. His smile is crooked and I get to see a glimpse of his fangs. They're disturbingly pointed, more like a weasel's than a fox's.
"Yes," I say. Then I wait.
"Sunlight and night," he says, the smile fading. One ear goes back, one paw rises, eerily slow just like Kitsune when he unleashed the fireball that ruined my life and ended that of so many others, and suddenly he's pointing right between my eyes. "That thing in your skull is a rock. I dare you to tip it over."
I wake up screaming.
-
"You're being discharged tomorrow," Doctor Bellworth announced cheerily, waving his clipboard in a sunbeam and sending dustmotes swirling. "We've done all we can for you. There are some papers to sign-"
I sighed and pressed the starchy white pillow over my head.
"Now now," the badger's burly voice cut through the feather down. "At the bottom of the paper work is a number for the prosthetics department. The good news is you qualify for a full cybernetic thanks to your military service. The bad news is you'll have to undergo brain implant surgery to gain full use of it. Well worth the procedure though. You'll be better with that arm than you ever were with your old one. The tech is state of the art!"
One lip curled into a snarl. I couldn't help it. My head was pounding and my nightmare hadn't helped. "Just shut up," I whined.
His laughter rolled through my ear drums like thunder. "That's the spirit!"
-
Had that been...my father?
-
Home didn't seem the same. The quiet two bedroom house was built on a corner lot, surrounded by tall green pines that whispered in the wind. I'd kept things neat, tidy and uncluttered, yet it seemed so empty. I felt a pang of sadness too, knowing he'd never walk through the front door again.
No more breakfast in bed, no more sitting on the front deck watching the rain, no more friday night movies wrapped in the same blanket and not really paying attention to the flatscreen.
I looked down at my keys. They glittered in the sunlight. I thought I wouldn't cry, I promised myself I wouldn't actually...
Fuck. The stupid stuff we tell ourselves and lie about.
-
My reflection in the mirror topless, breasts pert, gaze a bright sad green that seemed haunted, the slender hollow of my throat. My face was gaunt, more angular than I'd ever known it. My hackles went up and I shivered, hugged myself. For a second I stood frozen in a sense of surreality.
There he was again, Kitsune, his paw, that look, the fire and I-
I shivered, put my shirt on and slunk away from the sink feeling sick.
I stepped out onto the deck with a cup of coffee I'd brewed too strong. I took in the scents brought by the winds of the west and clenched my only paw into what old world humanity would have called a fist.
-
The number. Crisp and quick, casual black ink and starting with 776. That's the zip code of Empire Center.
Would I? Could I?
I watched a dead leaf spiral down, flutter to it's final rest on the ground as the pines swayed and creaked.
Dare you to flip it over...
"Shut up," I whispered.
Birdsong was the only response.