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Falling Apart

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Daniel18

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Diane woke suddenly, gasping with one hand on her chest. A storm raged outside, the wind howling, darkness surrounding her as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. As a fox, of course, she could see in the dark, though it still took a moment for her pupils to dilate when needed. In her bedroom, she should have been safe, her eyes immediately darting to the alarm system that had already been set up, the green light blinking in the peace of her room. Everything was safe, all was well. So, why did she feel...wrong?

The fox didn't know how else to explain the strange, prickling sensation, the feeling that something was wrong, though Diane didn't know what it was. Was it something inside her? The hairs on the back of her neck had lifted, but that was nothing unusual, even as she licked her lips, a most unusual tickling sensation catching her side.

"Erf..." She made her face, shaking her head as her light-russet ears twitched. "What the hell is that?"

There was no one there, of course, that she was talking to, though the ticklish sensation did not abate, not even as she pushed her silk bedsheets back, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her bedroom was large and open, so she didn't have to worry about walking into anything in the dark, though that did not help at all as she tried to ignore the feeling of being tickled, her body twitching and jerking. It naturally wanted to pull away from what it saw as a stimulus to her nervous system, though her toes curled and flexed as it attacked her feet too.

"Oof... No, for fox's sake..."

Diane muttered to herself, the vixen turning in a circle, pushing up her soft, cotton pyjama top to check out her stomach, the cream fur there looking, to all intents and purposes, untouched. It was perfectly normal and yet the feeling of being tickled persisted, making her hop from one foot to the other, however light she was on her hind paws.

It didn't make sense... Was it something she'd eaten? She didn't want to think it over too much, for there was surely an antidote to it in her underground base, though she wasn't even sure she was going to get there! Sitting on the edge of the bed, she took a deep breath, trying to compose herself, though that was impossible as the sensation change.

Itching. All over, as if a thousand ants or other insects were crawling over her, making her want to slap and scratch at her skin, the light, insistent prickling of a thousand thorns. Diane gasped, though didn't catch right then how her lips felt dryer, as if she didn't have as much control over them before, her entire body burning with the itch-itch-itch of something that was beyond her.

And she couldn't ignore it! Worse than the tickling, though, somehow, that sensation was still present too, her body twitching, pulling back, trying to rid itself of the stimulus of something that she could not even see! She grunted and twisted, her chin tucked down to her chest, but her body didn't even know what it wanted to do, in which direction it wanted to escape. Her head twisted back, nose pointed to the ceiling, though there was nothing there to free her from the crawling, biting itch, the force of it curling into pain, though she dug her short nails viciously into the bedsheets.

She would not scratch!

"I've got to fix this."

The fox hissed out through her teeth and stood again, but not even a seasoned thief and do-no-gooder like Diane could not have anticipated what was to happen next. For, as she tried to push herself up from the bed, her hand simply crumbled, fingers wasting away as if they were composed of nothing no more structurally sound than sand!

She let out a cry, trying to leap up, but her body would no longer support her, her arm disconnecting from her body. Shrieking, she wheeled and yet that only did worse as she crumbled to her knees, even though there was not much of a sensation of falling - her legs, simply, weren't there anymore!

And she couldn't talk either, her tongue disintegrating into grains in her mouth, swimming amongst her teeth. No words and not a sound more than a gargled cry passed her lips as she melted into an itchy crumble on the ground, a pool of what had once been Diane Foxington. She didn't know where her limbs were, except for one hand that was still stretched up out of the pool as her face fell apart into a seamless blob of grains, heaving and panting...though there was strangely no sensation of breath.

Her mind raced, screaming inwardly, for that was far beyond any training or mission she had undertaken for herself in her younger days! But her mind was still there, yes? She could still think? There was no ability to form words, not as her hand broke apart and fell into the pool of her, a mound of grainy compounds on the bedroom floor, touch and her perception of light her only senses left to her.

It had to be an attack, she thought, trying to quell her racing mind, though there was still the sensation of her heart pounding even if her heart was no longer formed in her chest, even if her chest was no longer there. It had to be another do-no-gooder that remembered her as The Crimson Paw from her former years, though they had not ended her life, at the very least. That was something to be grateful for, even though the itching, ticklish sensations had not faded entirely, leaving her with the feeling that there was shifting, crumbling sand all over her.

And maybe that was key... Diane steeled herself, though the memory she pulled on was anything but steel. It was of being at the beach when she'd been a fox cub, building sandcastles with her family. Grains of soft sand had run between her fingers, but she had still been able to compact what was damper, building her sandcastles.

She focused, her mind the only thing left to her as she thought of nothing more than a hand, the fingers, the detail in them. Although she couldn't see, she felt her hand form, rising from the mess that was her, a smooth mesh of ever-shifting grains, crumbled and broken apart. Her heart, seemingly, surged in triumph, and she pressed on, eager to see it through, though one finger broke and crumbled as she rushed through.

If she could fall apart into nothing, tumbling away, she could reform herself, build herself back up again...

Just like a sandcastle.

Yet it took more concentration than the fox ever thought she'd pulled on ever before to reform her body, though it did come, step by step. The itching feeling, dimmer in the back of her mind but always there, did not abate, lingering and lurking as she forced herself, with the utmost concentration, to bring an arm out of the pool of "Diane", making a shoulder, a neck, her head. With her face returned her eyesight as she gasped and yet her fur, though something was covering her head, was no longer there. Yet it did not feel that she was covered in skin either, but something smooth, something different, something so fragile that it merely broke apart if she pressed too hard on it. Like touching her nose, setting it crumbling off her body again, forcing her to reform it.

Yet once she had started, she could keep pushing on, until she brought a leg up - that took a few tries, however. The supporting limbs of her body were difficult to form and she crumbled back down to her thighs as soon as she got distracted, all the while still holding other parts of her body together.

"What the hell..."

She muttered, pleased that she could speak again, though her voice seemed smoother, lighter, more fluid. Almost as if it didn't have the same form that the vixen had had before too, which was...

No, she didn't want to go too far into that. When her thoughts wavered, anyway, her body crumbled, gasping as she lost a foot, balancing on one leg while she formed it once more, doing her best to keep herself together.

"I thought pulling myself together was supposed to be a task of emotional labour," Diane muttered, rolling her eyes. "Not a physical one..."

As she moved, trying to walk without disintegrating, her feet crumbled and forced her to constantly reform them. But what was worse than that was the tickling that returned full force with her attempt at movement, her thoughts jumping back and forth. All that made her do was lose more and more concentration so she fell apart, her body wiggling back and forth as her tail wavered, smooth grains streaming from it. The parts of her body never seemed to go far, not even as her tail dropped off and she squeaked, focusing on getting to light.

Of course, something like that would have had to have happened that night, she thought to herself, stumbling to her knees as her legs crumbled out from under her, though she didn't feel the impact as strongly anymore. On the contrary, it was like falling onto something soft, something with give, no pain receptors firing off, yet, in her "new" body.

But she couldn't linger on that, not as she stumbled, crumbled, fell apart - not at the seams, but literally. Outside, the storm still raged, rain lashing the windows and carefully tapping the light switch, when she finally made it to the other side of her room did not help, panting, a burst of ticklish twitches racing down her fingers, across her palm.

"Oof!"

She dropped to the ground, concentrating on reforming her body even as she understood that the power was out. That was not unusual, considering the storms they'd been having recently, but she should check in with her people too, make sure that teams were readying themselves to restore power as soon as it was safe to do so. For that, she would need a flashlight, even as she twitched and crumbled, cursing under her breath, back on two feet, as much as she wavered when upright.

Cursed...

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After all that, it didn't seem so much like an attack from someone else, no, but perhaps one of the objects she had stolen during her time as a thief, she thought. She could have stolen something, she'd heard of similar curses, that had placed such a form upon her. The real trial, if that was true, would be finding which one of her hundreds of stolen goods was the cause of the curse.

But that was a problem that she could focus on once she'd found a flashlight.

Her stomach lurched, feeling as if her guts were in place, but not really. Her body breaking apart and reforming seemed to have influenced her digestive tract, stomach gurgling whenever her belly was fully formed down to that point, yet the shaky sense of unease clawed at her. Even through the itching and tickling, that made her want to rub and itch at herself, scratching, all over, it was as if she couldn't hold onto herself, wobbly and shaky, panting lightly through a fragile chest.

Weakness... That was what it felt like, though she didn't want to consider The Crimson Paw weak, even if she didn't dare to clench her jaw, for fear of making that fall apart too. Her body moved slowly, so slowly, under her direction, though it was quite as if she hadn't eaten for days. Moaning softly, she let her head sag, no longer having the energy to keep it proudly lifted, her chin raised, just trying to make her way back across the room. If only she hadn't gone so far to start with...

There was a flashlight in the drawer of her nightstand, though she had never really thought of putting a lamp there. She'd just thought that the sound-activated lights in the bedroom wouldn't hear her voice in the storm, which was why she'd gone for the light switch. The fox, however, was far from mastering her new body as she panted, chest trembling and crumbling, the shape of it alternately defined and blurry, as if the edges were breaking away.

"Come on... You can...do it..."

She had to keep going, had to believe that as she grunted, forming her leg, her knee having more flexibility in her joint than before. Now, that felt more like the leg she was used to! Diane resisted the urge to touch it, to make sure it was there, even if it was so much smoother than her fur, making her staggering, though slightly straighter, more direct, way back to the bedside table.

All that movement, however, helped her take some control over her body, grains no longer streaming thickly from her hands and her feet, her toes even coming into shape. That bolstered her confidence a little more as she forced her way past the ticklish sensations, even as they prickled the most on the body part that she was moving at any given time.

"Yesss..."

Finally there, pushing away the sense of itching, she tried to pick up the small flashlight. The fox was fortunate that she had left it there, though she couldn't seem to get her hands around it. Cursing softly, she focused on her fingers, letting her concentration slip from the rest of her body, breaking down to her knees: she could reform her full legs afterwards, that wouldn't be a problem anymore.

It was hard, her body so sensitive, so fragile, that her fingers kept breaking apart the more she tried to lift it. But she had to keep trying, her newfound resolve bright in her heart, lips pressed together.

With both hands, she tried, letting herself come down to her waist, so that there were no legs on her body at all, not something more that she had to think about keeping together. If she concentrated as hard as only a fox could, perhaps she could keep her fingers formed, ignore the biting, itching prickle of them until...

"Yes!"

The flashlight had to be lifted with two hands, but she closed her fingers around it, imagining a sense of solidity. It was hard and she almost dropped it several times as she reformed her legs, begging herself not to fall apart again, for that would have put her back to step one when it came to the simple act of picking up the flashlight.

Diane trembled faintly, but she brushed the feeling aside, putting it down to the tickling, pushing through. It was wrong to be so weak, to feel as if she was broken, crumbling, though she managed to walk on two bare hind paws out of the bedroom, her body the most solid than it had been so far.

But the concentration, oh... She knew that she had to get to the power box, to see if she could reset the electricity in her home at the very least, but it took so much more out of her than before. The tickling was one thing, but focusing so hard left her wavering, weakened, falling apart.

It was down two flights of stairs as she crumbled along the way, dropping the flashlight and cursing, waiting and resting, trying to regain herself as she broke down physically once again. In the blink of an eye she had crumbled, her concentration falling by the wayside, but she had to rest and get up again, using everything that she had learned so far to keep going, to keep pressing on as she worked her way down the second flight of stairs. Sometimes she got a few steps in at a time, but she was tiring more and more rapidly, the ticklish itch getting the better of her.

Sometimes she sat before she fell apart, not wanting to see her limbs crumble all over again, the weight of her body so heavy, too much for her to hear. And yet she had to keep going, panting heavily as grains crumbled around her mouth and jawline, until, at long last, she reached the power box.

Triumph lifted her heart and yet the battle was not over yet as the vixen was forced to hold the flashlight with one hand, levelling it carefully at the power box. Her fingers itched and crumbled around it, prickling with sensation, though she forced down the ache of tickling into the background, concentrating once more.

One last push, she told herself. Then, she would be able to rest. Then, she would be able to see more clearly, not relying on her in and out night vision while struggling to keep herself, quite literally, together.

Only then would she be able to make her way down into the secret underground base and find what had caused her cursed transformation...if she would even find it at all.

Diane resolved to not think about that, her body prickling with ticklish energy even more fervently as she switched the power on. Whatever had gone wrong had ended up with a simple trip of her power, so it was, thankfully, not so bad that she had to immediately check her city and those that she was there to look after, which was a relief at least. Only a little, of course, but she was able to crumble down, legs shifting as clumps of them came off at once, melting into seemingly nothing. Diane, however, knew that all those little smooth grains would come back to her, that they were not going far, resting while the lights flickered back on through her house and the electricity hummed.

Cursed to come apart, to crumble whenever she tried to move. At least when she was still, barely breathing, exhaustion pouring over her, it did not tickle so much. Not as much, though it was still there.

Diane sighed.

What was she going to do about the crumbling before she could break the curse? It was not a question that she had in the dead of the night, even as her fingers curled into a light first. The fox didn't dare press down any harder, for fear of her hand crumbling just as it had before.

"I will make it."

She was resolute, after all, even when she didn't know what to do or where to go next.

Maybe that was why the curse had chosen her...