Boring part: I changed the sidebar around, to add links to subscribe to the site. More updates to it on the way.

Interesting part: The next part of Yurodivy’s story, Anomie: The Will to Power, is up! You can read it by clicking here.

We’ve both been working overtime on this, and she’s especially been giving the writing her all. Just imagine what she’d write if you commissioned her! ^.^

Anomie: The Will to Power (Part 2)

When I came to, there was something very different.

I don’t just mean in the sense that I was now covered in fur, or had a tail that felt strangely in-place and “right,” just like the rest of the new me did. Everything was sharper and stronger and harder to ignore. And it all smelled. Not in the sense of smelling bad, but everything smelled like something, and you have no idea how weird that is until you actually experience it. It’s like the olfactory equivalent of holding your face against a wall covered from top to bottom in neon signs. It was giving me a headache, though I’m sure the fact I’d been bludgeoned in the head by a thing about twice my size and three times my weight wasn’t helping.

And that was about when I realized the thing was probably still around, and there were probably a lot of other things with it. And now I was a thing. I wasn’t sure what kind of thing, but I wasn’t human anymore. Strange. I wasn’t thinking differently. I guess I was an animal all along. And now it was too late to cure me. I almost hoped the skinchangers would kill me, but they must have done something to change me. And with my luck, that probably meant I was too valuable to kill.

One of the skinchangers (I knew it was one because it smelled like a…well, like a me, but bigger and more dangerous, with a faint coppery tint I knew was blood) kicked me in the back. I froze, making myself as still as possible. If they thought I wasn’t moving, they might think I was dead, and then they’d leave me alone.

Yes, I do realize how stupid this sounds in retrospect. In case you’re wondering, it didn’t work. The skinchanger grabbed me by the back of my neck, which would have hurt more if I wasn’t possessed of what had to be an incredibly thick hide. It still managed to force me to my feet, more or less. I was having some trouble standing.

Then it burst into howls of laughter (no, they were literally howls. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense.) If I wasn’t covered in fur, I’m sure my skin would have been glowing red. I growled involuntarily and turned around, only to find a wolf about a foot taller than me.

Actually, everything was taller than me. The forest was lit only by dim campfires, but I could clearly make out one thing– there were no humans left. I might have felt threatened before, but it didn’t even compare to the growing feeling of dread I had now. The fear was back, and I couldn’t blame it. But there was something different this time, and I couldn’t place what because I wasn’t in much shape to think at the time.

I should note people like me often develop a very keen sense of when they’re being watched. Everyone there was staring at me. Most of them had claws and all of them had extremely sharp teeth. And they were tall. Most people have no idea what tall really is until everyone around them is suddenly three to four feet taller than them, or what it’s like to stare up into a predator’s eyes. So, one last time: everything was really tall.

I didn’t have too much time to dwell on this. One of the things lunged at me from the crowd, shoving me against a tree. He only had me by the shoulder. The logical side of me said it was almost playful in a very warped way, the way a schoolkid might punch a friend in the shoulder. The logical side of me had been shoved into a distant corner of my mind. The fact the monster pinning me was the lion didn’t help.

It was grinning at me. When you have a mouth full of very sharp teeth, this is a threatening gesture. I was frozen in place. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I was surrounded by monsters and the extent of my wilderness experience was camping out in a holographic simulation. Once.

“What is it?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wolf’s muzzle move, and somehow managing to form relatively comprehensible words. I will admit it hadn’t quite occured to me that skinchangers could speak in their real forms. They never did in the movies.

“It looks like prey.” The lion’s grin widened, punctuating his statement with a throaty, growling laugh.

Something snapped inside me, something built up from year after year of being taunted, laughed at, and treated as sub-human. I then figured out what I’d been feeling before, somewhere entangled underneath all that fear, something I hadn’t acknowledged or wanted to notice for ages. Rage. Not just simple anger, rage, the kind that’s tinged with fear for your own life and blights out all rational thought and all you can think about is ripping into something, anything, even yourself if need be.

I’d lost my temper like this a few times, mostly at school. I had been in a few fights, which ended in me being suspended. I had started out thinking the “vacation” from school might be nice. I spent most of the time being tested for mental illness and being yelled at by my parents and being afraid of what I was apparently capable of.

Much like my previous fights, I didn’t remember much from my attempts to break away. I remembered biting the lion’s arm and tasting blood and raw meat, and idly thinking he’d taste better with some aging, and then wondering where the heck that came from. And then he let me go and I was free and I ran and ran and bit and clawed everyone who tried to get in my way and ran some more until I couldn’t hear their yelling and screaming and rioting, and then a bit more just for good measure because I could still smell blood and I wasn’t sure if it was just what had gotten on my claws and muzzle or if whoever I’d attacked was still going after me.

I finally worked up the courage to look behind me. There was nobody there. Therefore, I calmed down just enough for the reality of my situation to sink in, and cause me to panic again.

I was in the middle of nowhere. I’d been turned into a monster, and I didn’t even know what kind of monster I was. Nobody knew I was gone, so nobody was going to come and save me. Even if they could, who’d want to help me now? I had no food, and with how much I knew about survivalism, I’d probably kill myself if I tried to gather my own food. The skinchangers were probably going to come after me soon and I probably hadn’t done a very good job of covering my tracks. I wanted to be tired but I couldn’t because I was still terrified and angry, and I’d probably be killed in my sleep by skinchangers or soldiers or evil spirits anyway. And now I’d never be able to go back to a town or a city because my fur was matted with blood, my clothes barely fit, and I was sure I generally looked like I’d just killed a person or two, and even if I could clean up I’d still look like the stuff of nightmares. And as a more immediate problem, I was really hungry and thirsty.

Well, starvation was not high on my list of “ways I wouldn’t mind going out.” I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to eat (all of the movies and books indicated the flesh of young children, though I now had a feeling that was sensationalized) but just about anything would taste good now.

The problem was still getting it. I was trudging along aimlessly without any clue where I was supposed to head. They told us in school that there were settlements out here (I believe the word “backwater” was used to describe them) but they neglected to mention where. The cities were better places to live, and there was almost never any reason to leave them. And in anticipation of not ever having refugees (except those who come by train from other cities) and attacks from skinchangers and evil spirits who serve them, they built up impenetrable walls around them.

Oh yeah, I was in trouble. I never should have left the skinchangers, the worst they could have done was eat me. There were supposed to be smaller, un-fortified settlements, but the people there were all savages and they’d probably chase me off with torches and pitchforks. Or burn me at the stake, everyone told me they were religious nutcases. Not that I could blame them for trying to kill me or run me off.  A lot of people and things were trying to do that lately.

My self-loathing thoughts were driven away by the sound of running water. Sure, I was sheltered, but I knew a stream when I heard one. I was so parched, and dying of thirst was not high on my list of “ways to go out” either. So I made my way down to the stream, but stopped dead when I saw my reflection at the mouth of the stream.

It took me a moment to realize what I was supposed to be. I hadn’t looked at a biology textbook in a few years, so at first I thought I was some kind of rat, just because of the way my face looked and my tail. But it just didn’t quite match up, until I remembered a few pictures I’d seen. I was probably a possum. They used to be considered vermin and carriers for disease. I had to laugh, because it was the kind of thing you had to either laugh or cry at. But I still managed to do both. It was fitting, after all. Now I just looked like what I really was on the inside– useless, bottom-feeding trash, better off dead so I couldn’t hurt anyone.

Despite nobody being around, the fact I was crying made me embarrassed, and that just made me cry harder. I splashed some water on my face to try and calm myself down and make it not so obvious I was crying, just in case anyone showed up who really cared. Still, it was surprisingly soothing and cooled my burning skin. I’d probably been sweating bullets underneath there. I was beginning to realize fur retained heat way too well.

I took off my shoes (wearing them with paws had been really uncomfortable anyway) and waded into the water. It was cold but soothing. Brought back memories of trips to the park and playing in the creek, times of blissful ignorance. What I wouldn’t give to go back…even a few hours ago seemed better than this. I blinked back more tears and tried to wash the blood out of my fur and clothes. I already was starting to feel like I weighed an extra five or ten pounds just from having wet fur. It reminded me of trying to wash my hair when it was long. Except this was worse because there was more of it.

I took a few handfuls– well, pawfuls of water and drank, trying to not think about what kind of diseases must be in the water. It at least took the taste of blood out of my mouth. And it had another benefit, I could smell considerably better now, because everything didn’t have a coppery tang to it.

Now I could smell something on the distance. Grease. Frying food. Probably some kind of meat, it was too faint for me to tell exactly what. Cooked food almost certainly meant civilization of some kind. Human civilization. I guess skinchangers could cook food, but they were more likely to be the kind of things who’d eat their food while it was still living.

This must have made me an exception. Every other skinchanger I’d seen had been some huge predator animal. I wasn’t. I didn’t know why, I’d never even seen a non-predator skinchanger on the news or anything. Then again, they probably just showed the scary ones.

I almost wondered what that guy on the train (what was his name? Leander?) had become. He hadn’t seemed dangerous. Then again, most people with eidolic toxicosis didn’t, unless their animal took over. The skinchangers had hurt us before they turned us, but I wasn’t sure if they’d bothered to do any damage after the fact. I’d probably done more to them then they did to me.

My stomach growled and I felt the first twinges of hunger pangs. I craned my head up towards the night sky. Surely enough, I could see the glow of artificial lighting. There had to be a human settlement up ahead. I could just go up and…

…And probably be chased off by a pitchfork-wielding mob. I needed to be a human again. That’s how things always were in the movies, the skinchangers could just blend seamlessly into a crowd. Then they’d usually rip into someone and run off, but I was really hoping not to do that. They wouldn’t give me food if I did.

They probably wouldn’t give me food as-is either. But I didn’t know how I was supposed to change back, or if it was even possible. I was stuck like this, and I hated it, and there was nothing I could do, but I was still starving and I needed to eat something. It was late at night. Maybe I could just sneak in. And then break into someone’s house to raid their fridge. or whatever it was outlanders used to store their food. And then have them call whatever passed for a military force there and get shot, or stabbed, or burned at the stake.

Okay, that wasn’t such a great idea. That left eating from the trash. Just thinking about that made me cringe. But I trudged on to the city and the scent of food, hoping I’d get lucky. Maybe I’d find someone with narcolepsy and terrible home security to take from. Maybe I could pretend to be someone’s extremely large dog. Maybe something passably edible would fall out of the sky.

Maybe they even tolerated skinchangers. Like that would ever happen.

The forest was less thick now, and I could see the beginnings of the town. It was more modern than I expected, like a picture from the days before they started using fusion reactors to power cities. They had to use electrical generators. Nobody in their right mind would have a fusion reactor that wasn’t well-fortified. From what I could see at the top of my hill, it was dotted with little houses, nothing big enough to be a military barrack. No stakes, gallows, guillotines, or anything like that either. So far, so good.

I sniffed the air. It still smelled like fried meat, though it had become staler now. And I was getting a whiff of something that smelled even better, though I couldn’t place what. It was some kind of fruit, I could tell that much, but it smelled like it was rich and sweet. My mouth started watering. I carefully followed the trail of the scent, trying to stay away from open areas. I didn’t see any people moving around, but now was a bad time to be careless.

I tracked it down to a garden in the back of someone’s house. Well, it was better than a trash can. Still, it looked barren, except for a few bushes poking out of the ground that were bearing a few strawberries. I shoved them into my muzzle as fast as I could pick them. It took me a few seconds to realize they were oddly squishy, and then a few more to realize that even in the dim light, their coloration seemed a little off. And that was about when I realized I was eating over-ripe strawberries. And they tasted good. My stomach lurched, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw up what little I’d eaten.

Then I smelled something else on the air. Something dangerous, something that reminded me of the skinchanger’s camp. I spun around, only to see a human.

“What are you doing here?” She demanded.

I hissed at her.

And then in the blink of an eye, she was three feet taller than me and was staring down at me with a very canine face.