FSE

Furry search engine

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"Drewey's song, Drewey's song, join the fun and sing along! Come on down, no time to waste! Let's all go to Drewey's Plaaaaace!"

...

The green-polyester dragon earned a fatal round of silence.

...

Buried within his costume head, Arthur Pryce was sweating bullets -- each hollow point aimed at his pounding, underpaid heart. The tiny, cramped backyard had transformed into a firing line, and he was the sole victim of the slaughter.

...

If this was truly the life of an actor, he seriously had to rethink his major.

Before his felt-covered corpse could rot away in the relentless midday sun, the poor 19-year-old was rescued by a small Jewish mother too old to be part of an otherwise adolescent audience.

"Yay, Drewey!" she hollered from the back row of lawn chairs, her sweaty hands smacking together wetly from a distance. At least she was having a good time...unlike her 13-year-old sitting in the front who looked visibly nonplussed about Arthur's intrusion at his Bar Mitzvah. Even through the thick fabric skull, he could hear one of the adjacent teens whispering to the birthday boy.

"Who the fuck is this guy?"

"I don't know, dude. My mom says he's from a kid's show or something. She's dumb."

"You should've asked for Freddy Fazbear. Har, har, har, har."

The surrounding kids snickered. It was the first -- and last -- laugh of the event.

Arthur sighed quietly enough so his will to live appeared perfectly intact. It was that quality of acting that got him enrolled at NYU in the first place...hopefully_._ However, this first semester wasn't kicking off quite the way he expected. He'd always imagined the freshman experience as fun, adventurous, and wonderfully liberating. By day, he'd be studying his stagecraft, his passion, and by night, he'd be downing kegs at a frat party before streaking down city streets with his new house brothers. Instead, he was trapped inside of a stuffy, B-rate mascot suit, dying in the scorching heat, on a Saturday, tying balloon animals for a bunch of teens who were clearly too old for the bit.

As he wrapped up the last of his unholy rubber creations, which one partygoer described as "a dog with a chub," Drewey the Dragon wanted to fly off a cliff -- without his plastic wings.

"Ok guys," said the overly pleasant voice of the mother. "Drewey has to fly back to his tree house! Everyone say goodbye!"

Arthur gave a big, two-handed wave to the crowd only to have it die in the wind. No goodbyes, just more derisive silence. Still, thoroughly committed to the role, he took in a big deep breath and gave his dead audience a lively farewell.

"Weeee hate to say goodbye, but bedtime's on the way. So brush your teeth, turn off the lights, it's time to hit the hay. But you don't have to worry, just wake up bright and early. Tomorrow is already on the waaay. Tomorrow's an extraordinary, very Drewey daaay!"

With his last note sung, Drewey shook his little felt tail and flapped his arms as he departed through the yard gate. That company-mandated sendoff helped with tips, or so he was told.

The costume's big three-toed paws thumped cumbersomely around the corner, partly from their overblown size and mostly from Arthur's exhaustion. There was a mandatory two-block minimum between the event location and the "Drewey Drop Zone." Any closer and they'd ruin the magic, apparently. More to the point, unmarked white vans and kids' birthday parties historically didn't mix well. That's what Arthur figured, at least. He wondered if his employer learned that the hard way...

As his hundred-year walk concluded, Arthur finally arrived at the inconspicuous dirt lot and looked around for his pickup. He didn't have to wait long. The bulky base camp on wheels whipped around the corner and hopped onto the curb with a heavy thunk. Arthur stumbled back before his big green foot got pancaked.

"Goddmanit, Mary!" he cursed. Next time, he was going to drive himself, company policies be damned. Stomping around to the rear bumper, Arthur ripped open the big back doors and felt a rush of A/C blast into his suit's nylon mouth hole. He sucked it all in, nearly giving himself a brain freeze, but it was worth it. At long last, he tore off his ungodly second head with a deep inhale. His soggy, brown bed-head slapped him in the face for good measure.

"Man, you must get such a workout in that thing." A flippant laugh reverberated from deep within the steel box. There in the front seat sat his driver, or rather Drewey's official chauffer -- a brunette, a sophomore, and a friendly-though-asshole-ish coworker who got her kicks by prodding him at every turn.

"Can you watch where the hell you're going?"

"I got my eyes on the road," Mary said. "And the sidewalk ain't the road."

"Yeah, so maybe don't drive on it?" Arthur sighed, wiping the ocean of sweat from his forehead and tossing Drewey's skull inside. He parked his plushy rear on the back bumper and began removing his costume/torture device piece by horrible piece. The fabric was glued to his skin at this point.

"Mrs. Han just texted. She loves you. Left a nice tip, which we're splitting by the way."

"S_he_ liked me. Her kid probably wants me dead."

"Well, her kid didn't pay for it."

The theatre major couldn't fathom how his poorly scripted song-and-dance routine was worth the money. He himself barely made enough to justify the headache. Still, of all the side gigs he desperately maintained to pay tuition, this one raked in the most. The tips saved his ass more than once.

As the "beloved" entertainer pulled off his fake chest cavity and its illegally fitted Mets jersey, there came a vibration from deep within his shorts pocket. His claw-tipped gloves reached inside for his phone. Hopefully, it wasn't their client texting her admiration directly. The last review he received was...not appropriate for his line of work.

The screen lit up:

1:45PM - Research thing $$$$$

Shit, that's today?

Arthur hopped up from the bumper and shamelessly peeled down his shorts and dark olive leggings before shoving them into the vehicle. He wasn't going to be late for his next payday. Retrieving his jeans, he reluctantly pulled a literal Hail Mary. "Hey, I have to be on campus in a few minutes. Could you drop me off?"

"Hmmmmmmmm." Her overexaggerated contemplation made him regret asking at all. "I'm not sure about using company resources for your side hustles. Unless, maybe, you take my shift driving tomorrow."

"Deal," he agreed without hesitation as he hiked up his pants. He didn't mind sitting behind the wheel. As long as he wasn't stuck in that stupid suit any longer than necessary.

Sliding into the passenger's seat, he checked the lab's address on his phone while pulling at the neck of his yellow-striped Tee for ventilation. The air conditioning lapped at his chest, but sitting in denim was a mistake he'd have to live with. Unfortunately, Drewey's gym shorts had been tightly sewn to the leggings after an "incident" with the last wearer. Mary said it wasn't the same costume, but Arthur didn't believe her.

"It's the new science building. The Christopher Pryce Center on 4th Ave. No, no relation, don't ask."

"Damn, the smart kids get all the nice stuff." Her hand made short work of the gearshift. "Maybe they'll dissect your brain and figure out why you're so lame."

"Yeah, I'll send them to you afterwards."

The wheels squealed as Mary peeled off the curb like a bank robber. Maybe this was why the van stayed two blocks away...

Speeding around the outskirts of Manhattan was a nerve-wracking battery of stops and starts. Arthur gripped his seat with one hand and focused on his iPhone before motion sickness could worsen his already shitty day. Meanwhile, his pilot slouched in her chair and reached into her Cheetos bag on the dash as if she wasn't bending traffic laws to their absolute limit.

"Sooo, third week on the job..." she sang. "Are we having fun yet?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. Yeah, no. What he had hoped would be an enjoyable line of work, one he could even put on his acting resume, had quickly dwindled into an obnoxious routine.

"Tons of fun. You guys get to chill in the office while I bust my ass workshopping your bullshit. Whoever wrote the script for birthdays needs their hands chopped off." The thoroughly ass-busted boy reached for a dashboard Cheeto, only for Mary to swipe the bag away.

A beat passed.

She held it out for him with an amused smirk.

"Sorry man, I'm no good in a suit. No acting chops, no comedic timing, clearly. You're the Oliver here."

"Olivier," he corrected. "Laurence Olivier. I swear you're doing this to annoy me."

"See? I don't know this stuff. That's why I leave the hard work to the professionals."

Arthur scoffed as he fixed his matted hair in the mirror. "Professional? That isn't even an official Drewey costume." He glanced at the suit's reflection with disdain. The big goofy eyes stared back, lifelessly frozen in time.

"Licenses are expensive, dude. And it's not like the kids can tell the difference. They still love you."

"They don't love me, they love Drewey. Actually, the kids today hated Drewey."

"C'mon, it was one bad party...Bar Mitzvah, excuse me." Mary shoved more orange pellets into her mouth as she merged into the wrong lane. Shrill horns cursed them both from the rear. "You still make a lot of folks happy dancing around like a monkey. That's gotta count for something, right?"

"Not really. They can't even see my face in that thing."

"Oh, is that what you're in showbiz for? The ass-kissing? Signing autographs?"

"No, it's...I don't know. I just expected more, I guess. Every play I've ever done has had an audience of fifty, and half of them are asleep. I want something bigger. Is that wrong?"

Arthur rested his chin in the palm of his hand and stared out the window. The glass towers observed him in silence.

"Word to the unwise, Olivia, don't fly so high. You're bound to crash, which is a really bad thing in NYC, by the way."

"Thanks for the advice, Dad," he muttered sardonically. His left hand moved to bump up the A/C when his phone went off in his right. He flicked on the screen assuming it was another random appointment he'd forgotten.

No. It wasn't that at all.

DAD: Hiya Art, do you have a minute?

Speak of the devil.

"Is that the boss?" Mary asked, rubbernecking towards the phone. The wheels turned hard into the parking lot, slamming Arthur into the side of the door.

"No! God, how do you still have a license?"

"Because I get people places on time," she said, tapping her finger on the dash's clock. "1:39, just in time. Although I almost missed the turn. I don't come down to big brain town very often."

Arthur was in the same boat. He'd only visited this part of campus for the sporadic research gigs. Also for Postmates -- engineering majors loved 1AM Chipotle. As the van rolled in, he reached for the door handle, hoping to get off at the curb before she ran it over again. However, when Mary spun the rear end into a parking space and killed the engine, he looked at her sideways.

"What, are you gonna wait for me out here?"

She laughed as she undid her seatbelt and tossed the keys into his lap. "Nah bro, I'm off for the day, gonna go for a walk. Just bring her back to the office when you're done."

"You're gonna go light up. That's what you mean."

"Course not! There just happens to be a great Chinese place down the block that I'm gonna be craving in about, uh, 20 minutes." Mary pulled a little stuffed baggie from her hoodie pocket and dangled it in the air. "Besides, I'm leaving our mobile operation HQ in Drewey's very capable paws."

The dragon's frozen face gawked in the mirror at her illicit substance use. Arthur simply rolled his eyes as he popped open the door and felt the weight of the sun crush him once again.

Most every science facility looked the same to the right-brained actor, especially in New York. A hundred windows, sterile, cold, more lifeless than the arts centers for sure, but probably with more working toilets. However, the outside of this new science shaped itself from fine red brick, and passing through the automatic doors, he found the lobby furnished in a welcoming maroon. It wasn't quite at hospital waiting-room levels of false comfort, but that seemed fitting for a bunch of doctors-in-training.

Speaking of, Arthur couldn't recall who was operating this experiment or their level of schooling. He didn't think to write it down. All that mattered at the time was the money they offered. $500 for just an hour of his time. It was a deal he couldn't refuse. As he crossed to the reception desk at the far end of the lobby, he could only pray that there wasn't a fellow freshman fumbling with needles in the back room.

Oh. Ok. Definitely not a freshman. There was straight up a kid sitting behind the desk, his blue sneakers kicked up to the side.

"You the lab rat?" the boy asked. Switch in hand, he didn't bother looking up from his game of Mario Kart. Short blonde hair spiked up in the back, giving him an anime protagonist vibe. He looked way too young to be enrolled here, if his baby face was any indication. At best, he was around the same age as the client from this morning.

Given the day's events, Arthur thought it best not to mention his alter ego.

"Uh, lab rat?"

"Head down to the basement. You can take the elevator to the left, or don't. Doesn't matter."

Arthur glanced at the shaft on his right and the stairway that opposed it. Of those options, he chose the obvious and left the strange boy to his devices.

As the already sweaty young man descended into the chasms of the science center, he scrolled mindlessly through Instagram and wondered exactly what this study would entail. The job post mentioned some kind of medical injection, but the description was vague enough to be a cover story. It probably was. He'd done several studies this semester, some of them blind and all of them a bit odd. Arthur didn't pretend to understand the scientific process. He was an artist.

His phone vibrated as a drop-down notice slid into view:

MARY: Btw ask the doc if he has kids. And if they like :dragon_emoji: :dragon_emoji: :dragon_emoji:

Hell no. The last thing he wanted was to think about was that dead-end gig after hours. He opened his messages and wrote back dismissively:

ARTHUR: Sorry off the clock.

As he swiped out of the conversation, his last unopened message stared him down:

DAD: Hiya Art, do you have a minute?

He clicked off his phone and shoved it back in his pocket. There was no time to spare. This sluggish elevator ride already cut into his session time. As his apparent journey to the center of the earth concluded, the steel doors barely opened when a man screamed from the other side.

"Watch out!"

A large metal cart hurtled down the hall, threatening to breach the elevator. Arthur flattened himself against the side of the shaft as the four-wheeled bull charged in and rammed the back wall with a wild crash. The bins on both of its shelves exploded as a geyser of papers and office supplies rained down onto the floor. Jesus, how many times was he going to be almost run over today?

The squeal of squeaking boots stumbled down the corridor in chase. Arthur peeked out to see a stout man in a classically white lab coat huffing his way towards the crash zone. His faint golden hair curled at the edges and bounced about as he ran. Each step had that same rubbery energy.

"Heavens, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" As the man bent over to clean up the debris, Arthur knelt down to help.

"Yeah, it's all good." The nearly flat freshman shoved a handful of pens into one bin when he noticed another sitting on the bottom shelf unperturbed. Inside was a pile of TV controllers, or so it appeared, in a rainbow of colors and markings. It reminded him of the bowl full of useless remotes that his father kept around the house -- neither of them knew which worked what anymore.

"Oh, thank you so much. You must be Arthur. I'm Dr. Pinehurst." The man smiled and extended his hand in a greeting. The faintest sign of wrinkles sagged under his eyes and along the rim of his forehead. He had to be in his 40s, no older than Arthur's father. Thick rectangular spectacles framed his oval face like a shapely Picasso.

"Nice to meet you, doctor." They shook as he grabbed the last few paperclips and tossed them onto the cart.

"Sorry to trouble you, but could you help me roll this back into the lab? It's got a rather crooked wheel, and I've got a crooked back," he laughed.

As tired as he was, the freshman nodded and grabbed the cart's rear end. Pinehurst took the helm and steered the fidgety dolly as straight as he could down the sterile corridor. The white walls felt more standardized than the lobby, although each door they passed had a single number placard mounted on the front like an apartment complex, and that was the extent of their labeling. They must have been unoccupied. Arthur had to wonder what other poor faculty would end up serving their tenure stuck in a basement.

"You don't have any TAs?" the student asked, holding up the rear.

"No, no assistants yet, but the first one is starting very soon. I've just moved into this lab, as you can probably guess."

"Where were you before this?"

"Boston, then Seattle, all over the country now. It's hard to find the right people for the trials we're running."

Arthur found the globetrotting quite impressive. "Oh, wow. And what are these trials for again?"

"Today is just a simple chemical test for Natrium Chloride. You know it better as saline, of course."

"I think I've heard the word..." He hadn't.

"Saltwater, basically. It helps with injections and fluid delivery in the body, and we're trying out a new brand. One needle, then you're good to go."

"You're giving out 500 bucks just for that?"

"You'll be surprised by how many people need this project to work. We're saving lives in the long run, so it's a worthy investment." Saving lives? Now that was a big deal. The thought of being part of such a grand project made Arthur's excitement skyrocket.

When they reached the double doors at the hallway's end, Pinehurst pulled a keycard from his coat pocket and scanned it on the wall panel. The entrance to the lab exhaled like an airlock as the doors split apart. Following the doctor inside, Arthur felt his jaw drop.

They had stepped into a void -- at least, that's how it felt. Pristine white tile ascended high above their heads for nearly three stories and coated the ceiling and ground in equal measure. The wide-open floor stretched out like a limitless plane before meeting the wall at the horizon. Arthur couldn't gauge the exact dimensions, but it seemed like they were standing in a giant isolating cube. The whole lab felt far larger than it needed to be and way over budget, even for NYU.

Mary was right. The smart kids got all the nice stuff.

"Holy shit."

The doctor glanced over his shoulder. "Yes, quite the beauty, isn't she?"

"What do you need all this space for?"

"It's just future-proofing, really. We could run any number of tests in here simultaneously. And honestly, some experiments just grow larger than you expect."

"No kidding."

Spacious didn't begin to describe the lab, if you could even call it that. There were no tables, no machines, no beakers or the usual glassware. Perhaps the department spent all their budget on architecture and left the supplies up to the professors -- typical administration. That would explain the beat-up cart still in use.

The old squeaky wheels reverberated through the chamber as Dr. Pinehurst directed them towards the center of the room. Sitting there, bolted in place, was a lone white chair waiting idly as they labored. It looked like a dentist's recliner from a distance, but...strange...and unwarranted in the open space. Its only companion was a standing metal rack flanking the right side, the kind of pole you'd see next to a hospital bed. Arthur wasn't sure if there was a more scientific term for it. He didn't bother to ask.

They parked their payload next to the sole seat in the house, and Pinehurst started digging through the mess in his bins. "I'll prepare the paperwork. Have a seat, you've certainly earned it."

Arthur relished the opportunity to get off his feet. It was amazing how much cart pushing could become a workout. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and moved to sit. However, now that he saw it up close, the chair's bizarre design became quite apparent. A metal footrest sat at the bottom of this bulky, white-leathered contraption. He pushed his hand down on the padded seat -- bouncy, same as the thick rounded armrests. Then there was the back, just as thick and plush, but the middle was cut out entirely. It looked like a horseshoe strapped to a pile of couch cushions.

"Is this ok to sit on? I feel like I'm gonna fall out the back." He shoved his whole arm through the hole to make his point.

"Of course! I know it seems odd, but it's incredibly ergonomic. I've been told that it's the best gaming chair on the market. Amazing ventilation."

Ok, ventilation sounded great. Any more sweat on Arthur's back was gonna give him acne for the rest of the year. As Pinehurst searched for a clipboard, his subject plopped down into the chair and put his feet up on the support. Wow. The doctor was right. It really was comfortable.

"So, Arthur, what are you studying?"

"I'm a theatre major."

The doctor froze, head jerking up from the overstuffed cart. His bright eyes shined like headlights behind his lenses.

"You're an actor! How wonderful. You know, I'm something of a thespian myself."

"Really?"

"Indeed, I was a theatre minor at Princeton. I thought hey, if the science thing doesn't work out, there's always the arts."

"Huh. I feel like science is more, I don't know, stable?"

"Heavens, no! There's no such thing as stability as a scientist. Our job is to break things, challenge the status quo and the laws of physics. We challenge God on a good day! It took me a rather long time to find people who understood my work, let alone appreciated it. And now, I can't imagine being anywhere else."

Wow, he was monologueing. Definitely a theatre kid.

Arthur tried to be respectful of his tangent. "Well, uh, it sounds like you found the right cast to be in."

"Exactly! Sometimes, you just have to find the right ensemble. Speaking of, how are you finding your first semester? Do you have many friends here?"

"Uh...one. Kinda." He shrugged. Do coworkers count? Maybe friends was a strong word. "It's been a lot harder than I thought. I'm pledging a frat next week, so that should help, I think."

"Of course, of course. And, it's only the third week. I'm sure you'll find your people very soon. You have quite a stage presence, I can tell!"

Arthur perked up. "Thanks, I'm glad someone thinks so. My Shakespeare professor says I don't have chemistry with my scene partners, but it's not my fault they're stuck on the text's intentions --"

The eccentric man continued listening, or at least pretended to, as he retrieved a clipboard from the cart as well as the last of his papers. What he presented to Arthur was a massive stack of white loose-leaf too tall to ever be clipped down. The boy's brow cocked as he wondered what the point of the clipboard was.

A paper mountain landed in his lap with a thud. "Wow. This is a lot."

"It's all formality, you know how these things go. You mix legal jargon with medical data and suddenly the whole thing's a word salad. I'd just sign the last page and call it a day. I'm sure you don't want to be here all afternoon reviewing legalese. You have far more important things to do, right?"

"Yeah, it's not like you're paying by the hour."

The doctor let out a guffaw, "It's true, we're not!"

Finally. A decent laugh for the day.

At his audience's recommendation, Arthur skimmed the first page or so, then dug his way through to the bottom. Natrium chloride -- chemical delivery -- synthetic cells -- yadda yadda. With a flick of his wrist, he committed his next sixty minutes to the pursuit of science and fast cash.

He returned the novel's worth of paper to the doc and sat back in his horseshoe chair. His hand absentmindedly reached into his back pocket before pausing. Despite the lack of medical machines in view, the last thing he wanted was to screw up his golden ticket. "Hey, can I use my phone in here?"

"Feel free, although there's no reception down here due to the insulation. Some experiments get rather noisy, believe it or not."

The subject-to-be didn't understand how loud things could possibly get in a biology lab, let alone one so barren, but luckily he had videos downloaded for just such an occasion. Arthur flicked on the lock screen and found that the doctor was correct, of course -- no signal, not even a single Wi-Fi band.

When his face scan opened the device fully, the screen lingered on his last unopened message, the one waiting for a reply with saintly patience. His thumb hovered over the textbox. Lips pursed, he reluctantly returned to the conversation gathering dust:

8/29/23

DAD: Howdy Art! Hope you're enjoying the campus! Lmk if you need anything ok

ARTHUR: k

9/4/23

DAD: Did you pack enough shirts? I found a wash basket full of them hehe

ARTHUR: yes

9/12/23

DAD: Saw you beat Michigan State!! Did you go to the game?

ARTHUR: no

9/20/23

DAD: Are you coming down for Thanksgiving? I know it's early but I can find the best flights ahead of time. I know you like the window seats :smile_emoji:

9/26/23

DAD: It's sweater weather already :frozen_face: Do you need some more?

9/27/23

DAD: Sorry, maybe I'm bugging you too much :laughing_sweat_drop:

9/30/23

DAD: Hiya Art, do you have a minute?

Arthur bit on the inside of his cheek. He had sixty minutes, but not one to spare. He couldn't reply now if he wanted to.

"You have quite a lot of texts there, Mr. Popular." The doctor glanced over his shoulder while scribbling notes on the clipboard. Although he'd normally find such nosiness intrusive -- for instance, if it were coming from a coworker -- he felt like the man could understand his plight, from one thespian to another.

"Nah, just my Dad. He bugs me all the time."

"I see...I'm sure he misses you, being out of state now."

"He's the one who wanted to move off Long Island. I'm obviously not gonna make it if I'm stuck in the suburbs, mowing grass and golfing all day. Like, let me live my life."

"I know, I know. You want to spread your wings. Don't we all? But parents are wont to worry."

"Tell me about it. He seriously needs a hobby that doesn't involve blowing up my phone." Arthur's eyes drifted back down to the screen. "This is what happens when you retire to Florida, I guess --"

His words trailed off as the sound of peeling Velcro tore through the air. He hadn't noticed the straps latched to the undersides of the armrests. They only became apparent as the doctor wrapped them around Arthur's wrists.

"Uh, what's with the straps?"

"Standard practice in these trials. The goal is to keep your arms and legs in the same, perfect position that opens your veins to the fullest extent. That way we can standardize the flow of the solution through your body."

Arthur wasn't a scientist in any regard, so he took the man's words at face value -- even as his ankles were strapped down by the footrest. Frankly, he'd participated in far weirder experiments this month. The last "date" he went on was with a literal mannequin in a wig who asked a battery of questions about his deceased mother. Oddly, that wasn't the worst date he'd been on either.

"So, your father? He doesn't support your art? I can relate."

"No, it's actually like he's...I don't know...over supporting? He's always trying to do stuff for me. He's been that way since I was little, but now he doesn't see me as a grown-up, like at all."

Arthur thought about what to write back in his message later. It was too direct a question to ignore. That would end up with a phone call worrying if he was still alive, and he certainly didn't need that again. He could only blame his late replies on time zones for so long.

Wait...the time zones...

He glanced over to Dr. Pinehurst, who retrieved a translucent IV bag from the bottom of the cart. The label print was too small to read. "Hey, how'd you know my Dad's out of state?"

"You said he lives in Florida," the man clarified, hanging the drip from the metal rack.

"No, I said that after you mentioned it."

"Ah, you must have written that in your submission online," he corrected himself as he attached a rubber cord to the plastic bag. The branula on the far end of the tube housed a needle, sharp like a rapier.

"I don't think I would --"

"What's the first rule of improv, Arthur? Don't say...no."

He winced as the doctor punctured his right arm. With a tap of the bag, Pinehurst sent the clear fluid running down the pipe. The man's handiwork wasn't particularly gentle, but that was fairly common in these studies. At least the guy wasn't performing surgery.

What struck Arthur as odd, however, was the second IV bag the doctor now had. It was a deep solid green. Unmarked. He couldn't even see the fluid shaking inside it.

"Two bags? How much sodium are you pumping into me?"

The doctor cleared his throat as he mounted the new bag and fiddled with its scorpion tail. "So listen, Arthur, I'm afraid I haven't been totally upfront with you. And those papers you signed legally require me to inform you of this...now." With a click, he spliced the two bags into a single tube leading to the student's restrained forearm.

"Is this one of those blind studies?"

"Oh no, you need to know exactly what's happening. Legal-wise, and as professional courtesy. Although, perhaps it's easier to show than tell, as it were in the theatre." He bent down and grabbed the bin full of miscellaneous remotes. "Shoot, which one is it again? I always get these confused."

Arthur was quickly losing patience.

After a prolonged amount of digging, Dr. Pinehurst retrieved the proper remote, a blue one with too many buttons to count. He aimed it towards the floor, about three feet away, and with a single click commanded the tiles to split apart like a cartoonish trap door. A low rumble filled the room.

The hum came muffled at first, distant, making Arthur question his sense of hearing. It grew closer and clearer every second. Something was crawling up from deep beneath the lab's floor, scratching at the underside of the tile. The young man's brow furrowed with a stark sense of unease as the pitch grew higher and higher. It hissed like a pipe ready to burst.

A little black dot shot up from the floor. It floated quietly over its cavernous home as the tension dwindled into nothing. Arthur relaxed in his chair. The room's acoustics were playing tricks on him.

"This is a TFT Receiver Drone. Government funded, scientifically approved."

Unlike the devices seen floating around Washington Square, capturing aerial shots for the film majors, this thing was deceptively small and discrete. Its body curved in a perfectly spherical shape, coated in black paint save for the glass lens staring back at him. One distinct propeller blossomed from the top, its rapid rotation the source of the nagging noise. It looked like a magic 8-ball fused with a toy helicopter.

"Wait, this isn't for the university?" the student asked. Almost in response, the drone flew in to greet him and hovered uncomfortably close to his face.

The doctor chuckled at the boy's slow uptake of information. His thumb clicked another button on the remote. Then another, and another, and another. The buzzing sweltered again with a ravenous groan. One by one, more drones emerged from the ground in marching order and floated about the room, a tiny black swarm facing off against Arthur's restrained form. It was 12 against 1, and he was surrounded.

Pinehurst dropped his remote back into the bin and pulled out another, this one marked with red tape. He aimed for the wall in front of them. Click! The tile panels shifted about with the metallic whirrs of industry, exposing a large array of dark TV monitors. A 3-by-3 stack of extra wide panoramic views.

With a sigh, he set down the controller and grabbed two more from the bin, one for each hand. "I ordered a universal remote, but it's not getting here till Friday. So, please bear with me."

The laborious process continued on repeat. Pair after pair, the screens flickered on in random sequence, filling the room with a low electric hum. Arthur would've found it comical, but what he saw in the monitors made his neck hair stand at attention.

Displayed on nearly every screen was his own helpless reflection at his best and worst angles. The footage bounced and panned with the minute motion of the drones. The only exception was the fifth one smack dab in the center of them all. That one displayed a logo. A blue emblem with an eagle planted firmly in the center.

"On behalf of the United States Department of Defense, I would like to thank you for your contribution to our next generation of personal arms operations. And personally...I'd really really like to thank you for making my dreams come true."

The tone in his voice shifted to a sour-sweet saccharine as if all pretenses had fallen to the wayside. Arthur's stomach churned.

"Here's the truth. We really testing a Natrium Chloride brand, but to do that, we're also testing a second, RNA-based solution. The saline serves as an enzyme catalyst and delivers the serum directly to your cells' mitochondria. They work together almost like Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney, but ideally, in a less fatal partnership."

The word fatal sent a chill down his spine. His anxiety only worsened when the doctor retrieved a pair of scissors from one of the bins and moved around to the back of the chair. Arthur's whole body tensed.

The chopping of fabric made him jerk forward.

"What the hell! Did you just cut my shirt?" He already knew the answer as the chill of the lab's desolate air encroached on the bare skin of his back.

"Just at the top, nothing you can't sew. Although you won't want to by the time we're done. And..."

A more rugged tearing of fabric. Way way too close to his ass.

"Get away from me!" he yelled, feeling the doctor's hands grip his belt. A cruel flush rose in his cheeks.

"You'll thank me for that one later." As a rogue drone floated behind him, Arthur could see the ruin of his clothes on the third monitor. Two holes, one by each shoulder, and a much larger gap in the back of his jeans. Just what he needed, his ass crack on video. If that ever leaked, he'd be trending on the campus IG story in no time.

With a click of the remote, the center screen switched feeds to a PowerPoint slide. Arthur's eyes rolled back in his skull. Great, he needed another lecture this week.

"Turns out, universities provide a rather exquisite subject pool. Always on rotation, varied characteristics, and the Hard-Right senators are eager to displace the, quote, liberal youth. Let me clarify, I don't agree with that last bullet point."

"Just get to the goddamn point!"

"What I'm saying is that a diverse genetic selection is key for this trial's goal, which is, getting to the point, creating biological adaptations for human soldiers." He read the last bullet point verbatim, but it still sounded like word salad to Arthur.

"Adaptations?"

Pinehurst moved to the next slide. All it contained was a stock photo of a wolf. How illustrative. "We started small, just extra hair for cold climates. Padding on the soles for dangerous terrain. Then we moved into more...robust transitions. Full animal hybrids."

Arthur scoffed at the thought. That last part he understood. His fear twisted into annoyance. The doctor wasn't a serial killer after all. He was just making shit up. "So what, I'm gonna grow fangs and a tail? If this is some weird performance art you're doing, I want out."

"You'll be growing a lot of things, Arthur. You're what we call an Advanced Splice." With a wave of his remote, Pinehurst proceeded through the rest of his slides. The screen shuffled through a variety of strange images, what looked like photos of animal creatures, but standing on two legs. Arthur presumed it was all Photoshop or A.I. generated. "We've tested a number of these high-end models. Wolves at U of T, cats in Miami State, cows in Caltech. The cows were grossly ineffective in combat. And gross, frankly, they were gross. But do you know what they all had in common?"

"They were all figments of your imagination because you're a shitty playwright who's taking immersive theatre too fucking far."

"They were what we call plantigrade. They walked flat-footed like you or me. Well, not me, I have uncomfortably high arches. But today is very different. After trial and error, we've realized that humans walk really stupid, especially in combat zones. There are far better ways, and I'm very excited to see those come to fruition today."

With a Cheshire smile, Pinehurst took a knee before Arthur's throne and reached for the young man's Nikes. His captive subject kicked on instinct, but he had no room to work in his Velcro-like restraints. What the hell were these things made of? His eyes could only widen when the doctor unlaced his sneakers and set them aside before rolling off the cotton socks they once housed. Arthur's toes curled defensively as they were unwittingly exposed to the cold air.

Arthur's thoughts assumed the worst of intentions. "What are you doing, you perv?" he said, his voice nearly choked in his throat.

"We need a clear view of your feet post-injection. They're a key measurement in this study. And you're not going to want to wear those anyway. Trust me." He stuck Arthur's socks into their shoes and began to roll up the freshman's denim pants legs into carefully folded cuffs, the bottom hems hovering just above the ankle.

"Dude, just cut the seams already! You already chopped up my clothes." Arthur scowled at the man's pedantic decisions.

"No, this view is fine enough. And they look super cute, don't you think?"

"I don't," he asserted. His frustration spun off into disgust. Were his feet being ogled by this creep? The idea made his jaw clench and his palms sweat profusely. He dried them on the armrests as best he could. However, the discomfort only grew as he rubbed his hands on the leather. A restless itch built under thumb, as though the skin was chaffing. And it was getting worse. Way worse.

"God, what's up with my hands?" Arthur muttered with disdain. No matter how much he rubbed, the irritation wouldn't abate. Frustration finally made him wriggle his left hand around until he could see the underside. His jaw fell. "The fuck?"

Jaundice had spread across his palm. At least, that's what it appeared to be. He didn't know what else would cause patches of dark yellow skin to cluster under his thumb joint and the base of his fingers. Was it just a rash? The discolored splotches crinkled into a dry crosshatch along the palm and were already spreading across his hand like the plague.

"What the hell is this chair made of? I think I'm allergic!"

"There's nothing wrong with the chair, nor your hands. Those scales are carefully designed to ensure your safety when scaling surfaces, pun intended. Imagine climbing a barbed fence or even a brick wall. You'd be a natural in the field!"

"Fucking scales? What?" His brow furrowed as nervous sweat trickled down past. The increasingly golden patterns on his palm divided into segmented bands that ran from his wrist to the blade of his hand, like a boxer's fist wrapped in tape. While Arthur's eyes squinted at the bizarre second skin creeping up his fingers, a curious little drone flew up to his palm and projected the incessant rash onto the first monitor in the stack. The detail was so fine he could see individual flakes of yellow forming on his skin.

Maybe this wasn't an act after all...

"I wasn't lying about tracking the changes in your body. These drones automatically detect the flow of the serum and any resulting alteration. The footage is tantamount for future study. Plus, they shoot at an incredible 16K, so you and I are in for a great show."

"Why the hell do I have to watch this?" the itchy boy spat.

"Your awareness has no effect on the outcome, as we've learned, so really, you don't have to. It's not gonna stop me though," he shrugged before turning to the film in progress.

As disgusted and mortified as Arthur was, morbid curiosity kept him glued to the screens. He wouldn't shy away like a scared little boy, even as the hard, yellow, scab-like plates filled the TV edge to edge. They covered the undersides of both hands entirely now, marring his skin from fingertip to wrist. With a grimace, he flipped his hands back down before the drones could capture any more unwanted footage. His captor didn't complain, however, as a pair of drones already drifted down to their next destination.

Moments after the bots gathered at his feet, Arthur stifled a groan as the same ugly itching dug its claws into his bare soles. This was why the doctor tore off his shoes, wasn't it? Gross. He squirmed and tried to kick in his restraints, scratching his feet against the footrest in desperation. Unfortunately, this obstructed the view for the drones, and Dr. Pinehurst saw fit to make accommodations.

"Sorry, Arty. This is for science," he said with a smile. That was a half-truth. Science wasn't the only reason he kicked the footrest down, exposing the bottoms of Arthur's feet to the illicit eyes of the cameras. Plain and simply, he liked his subjects barefoot. Fewer distractions.

Now there was nothing for the changing man to dig his skin into. Great. His poor toes curled and clenched as the alien pattern overwhelmed his foot bottoms live on screen. The little black drones orbited like starships, angled perfectly over the invasion in progress as they projected a split-screen onto the second monitor. Scraggily yellow scales marched along both arches before climbing up to his toe tips and down around his heels. Not an inch of pink would escape the assimilation.

"What an adorable scale pattern you're forming on your feet! It's far more detailed than your palms. I never expected such a distinction."

"Don't say it's adorable, you freak! Can't you make it itch less? At least numb it or something."

"Hmmmmmm, here. Maybe these will help." The doctor lackadaisically returned to his bins and pulled out his supposed remedy. The sight of it made Arthur grimace. In lieu of any ointments or medicine, Pinehurst held up a pair of sandals. The Greek-style kind with two brown crossing straps that wound over your foot and curved around the heel -- nothing prescription, just the kind you'd find at a Target. Hell, Arthur swore he saw the same pair while shopping last week.

Returning to his spot at Arthur's feet, he compared the length of the sandal to the young man's sole. The size was...close enough. It'd do for now.

"I suppose we'll live with the obstruction for now, and focus the shot on your toes instead."

"Stop screwing with me! Fuck off!" Arthur fought back as best he could, twisting his feet about in abysmal resistance.

The doctor laughed aloud at the apparent uprising. He loved these overdramatic reactions. They reminded him of his theater days. He let Arthur tire himself out before proceeding. Then, with a surprisingly iron grip, Pinehurst snatched the freshman's foot and held it firmly in place. Arthur winced as the scientist's cold fingers twisted around his skin.

"Here's a fun little fact," he noted. "This will be the last pair of footwear you'll ever wear."

He shoved the sandal onto Arthur's foot and buckled the little strap by the ankle. Then came the other leg. The itch young man didn't bother fighting a second time. With both sandals latched onto his feet, he could confidently confirm that they did nothing to alleviate the scratchy burning on his soles. He tried shaking them off, but they were too firmly attached.

"I will say, they go great with the jean cuffs. Honestly, you could've modeled, Arthur. Maybe you still can, let me make a few calls."

"I'm not some zoo exhibit! If I make it out of here, I'm gonna sue your ass for this!"

"You have no grounds for litigation. The paperwork's legal. US Attorney General approved."

"You made me sign it!"

"No no, I encouraged you, but you're a big boy, you made that choice. Though admittedly, I do push the cart into the elevator to make myself endearing to people and restrain them easily. That's the loophole in the contract. It's kind of weird, but I like to think of it as a meet cute."

That phrase sounded so wrong in this context.

"Okay maybe, I did trust you. And you told me I didn't have to read everything, which means you lied, you piece of shit!

"No one ever reads the terms and conditions for things, but they're still enforceable."

"I'm gonna enforce my foot up your --" Arthur's words fell short another drone barreled towards him. His breath hitched, exhaling only as the metal bug stopped just inches away from his chest. Its cavalier acceleration gave him an eerie déjà vu.

"Okie dokie, let's take a look under the hood."

With no concern for modesty or his victim's wishes, the doctor yanked up Arthur's shirt for the camera. Fresh scales rippled over his stomach like waves over peach sand. In preparation, his belly button sowed itself shut with a sharp pinch, and his two pruney nipples sank down into his skin until they were no more. Any semblance of his mammalian nature got washed away in the golden tide.

"Wow, these scutes are coming in so smoothly. They're a bit firmer than the ones on your hands and feet." The doctor ran his fingertips over Arthur's plated abdomen like it belonged to a pet iguana. Each trace flipped the boy's already disgruntled stomach.

"Get these things off me!"

"There's nothing to really take off, Arthur. The scales form from your skin's upper layer, so unless you want that removed..." he mused. "Now what's cool about these scales is that they provide an extra layer of dermal defense. I mean, don't try absorbing a bullet point blank, but you'd be seriously kicking ass in a boxing match."

Arthur couldn't take the advice, unfortunately, as the stabbing sensation of a phantom bullet sank deep into his chest. For the first time, his discomfort crossed the threshold from irritation to violent pain. A sharp yelp escaped his lips as his eyes slammed shut. His breaths turned to gasps. His heart pounded in his ears, but at such an erratic rhythm that it made him want to scream.

"You probably feel your heart rate increasing. Don't worry, you're not dying, probably. The pain is just your heart breaking down one of its valves. You don't really need four, to be honest."

"Make it stop!" His scream bounced around the echo chamber as uncontrollably as his sudden arrhythmia. He may not be a science major, but he knew people's hearts didn't just lose valves without consequences. It was the closest feeling to a heart attack that he could imagine.

The serum spread across his torso as a crippling tightness ensnared his lungs, forcing painful wheezes from his desert-dry mouth. He couldn't breathe, then he breathed in too much. It repeated in a cruel cycle of asphyxiated purgatory.

"Now your air supply is growing rapidly as your lungs expand and form new bronchial tubes. You'll certainly need a lot of oxygen for hazardous terrains and, of course, high altitudes. But I'm sure you know all about breath support, so I guess I'm preaching to the choir."

Arthur's mind spiraled as his chest underwent aggressive evolution. Would he die in the process? If he lived, would he get shipped off to military school? Pushed out of a Boeing over some country halfway around the world? Who knows what the government had planned for their test subjects.

All he knew was that they were turning him into a weapon.

In their next advance on his body, the drones orbiting his feet angled downwards and projected the tops of his toes onto the split-screen. Arthur knew now to brace for impact. He had no choice but to bear the transformation alone with all his might. Moments after his feet came into view, the pain flared across them in a scorching heat wave. It was hotter than the itch of growing scales, more tense than his chest twisting and tightening. This anguish cut into the bone.

A cacophony of cracks and crunching bone sewed discord through the air, playing background to Arthur's strangled cries of pain. The young man's size 11 feet began lurching up the ladder of measurements. Centimeters by the second, his arches elongated with creaks and groans as muscle struggled to keep time with the growing bones. The tendons strained with the unstoppable pull, flexing sharply under the skin as their respective digits overextended and curled both by force and out of reflex. Despite the additional length they gained, his feet didn't swell much wider, leaving the proportions completely out of order. The whole event was a gross pandemonium.

"F-Fuck! It's like my feet are breaking in half!"

"Yes, I can hear! It's quite a concerto," he laughed. "See how your metatarsal bones, the ones in the middle of your foot, are lengthening, compacting, and strengthening? It's beautiful craftsmanship. Our sequencing projections were right on the money!"

All the strength and length added to his feet couldn't save him from the present torture. The sandals he unwillingly wore began to constrict the tops of his growing feet. The straps, though thin, held fast against his skin and indented the flesh like clutched piano wire. Arthur whimpered in pain as the leather choked his feet, worsening the already miserable experience. His original shoe size had pushed their limits to begin with -- this was simply cruel.

In no time at all, his toes slipped past the lip of the leathery soles and teetered off the edge. Their pink hues faded to grey before sprouting hard, spotty scales of their own -- not of gold, but a deep emerald. These plates formed interwoven diamond crests, nothing like the round bands underfoot and along his chest.

"Beautiful, Arthur. Soon these scales will cover every inch of your body in a magnificent green armor. Because they don't need to be as sensitive as your fingertips and soles, we were able to tighten the interlocking pattern for added strength. And these scales sparkle, which makes them look really cool." Pinehurst watched the screen with excitement as a line of dazzling green drew itself up Arthur's foot and under the cuff of his pants leg.

The rest of his scale development was scattershot, leaving him with the body of a two-toned Jackson Pollock. Green pools sprouted on the back of Arthur's hands, and ran rivers all the way down to his nail beds. There was a larger splash on his left bicep, his right wrist, a small one on his neck. As the changing colors saturated his form, the drones took flight and encircled him in a whirlwind, capturing every angle and each discernible scale not covered by his streetwear. Whizzing rotors howled in his ears, centering him in the middle of a cyclone. The screens flickered wildly as they jumped from camera to camera, capturing every inch of visibly growing scales. The spin was overwhelming. He finally had to close his eyes.

"Come on, Arthur, you're an actor. You should be used to being on camera." The doctor's teasing was lost on him as he struggled to block out the world.

While the green splotches continued their growth, two drones broke off from the pack and whipped past Arthur's head to capture his rear flank. Their wicked shrieks were enough to catch his attention. He twisted his head back, but they were already out of view when his neck muscles stung from the whiplash. Before he could track them down on the monitors, a violent crunch rang out behind him. The agony thrust him forward, and he arched his spine as slobber shot out of his mouth. If he didn't know better, he thought the drones themselves had stabbed him in the back. Twice.

"Argh! Hah!" Arthur screeched as his wrists squirmed in their confines. Torrents of pain rushed through his back muscles, spiraling out from both shoulder blades in equal measure. His upper arms jerked and thrust about, practically dislocating themselves on and off like a contortionist -- but with all the pain you'd expect if you weren't double-jointed. He could feel his shoulders broaden as the bones and muscles thickened with wet cracks of expansion.

"Good news! Your scapulae have begun their exponential growth. This is perhaps the most dramatic part of your transformation. Certainly, the most riveting."

Riveting wasn't how Arthur would describe it. Excruciating would be more accurate as his shoulder blades throbbed and swelled under the skin. He'd never been so cognizant of them before, but now they felt swollen and misshapen, if that were even possible, like they were ready to rip out of his back.

But no ripping came to pass. It was so much worse.

Mimicking his overextended feet, the flesh of his shoulders started to elongate, pulling backwards, expanding, pushing away from his torso. Sickly cracks of bone and warping muscle piled onto his groaning as the heat flared under Arthur's skin. Entirely new structures willed themselves to life and poked up like telescopes from his upper back. He stared in horror at the screen, where two fleshy rods, tightly wrapped in skin and muscle, pushed past the holes in his shirt and through the cut-out back of the chair. Its design finally made sense, and that absurdity made him furious.

As they slipped past the chair's boundaries, the bizarre rods of flesh altered themselves further. They snapped sharply and bent upwards at an angle, forming elbow-like crooks and twitching uncomfortably in the air. Arthur whimpered as he felt strange new muscles in his back cramping with each spasm. When the stems reached their apex, the nubby tips began swelling, more bone compiling by the second and rounding out into distinct, blocky shapes. The tips branched out like a twisted tree limb, five tiny extensions splaying wide as they came to life.

And then damn things waved at him.

Arthur couldn't believe what he was seeing on screen. Fighting the pain, he twisted around to look over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was something akin to two long, skinny arms swinging around behind him. Both came adorned with distinct, for lack of a better word, fingers.

"Are those fucking hands?"

"Better, Arthur...so much better."

The facsimile "arms" snapped at what would be the wrist and twisted towards the ground as if utterly broken. Arthur clutched the chair with his actual hands and screamed in agony. His new "fingers" broke as well, the bones within elongating and splaying wide into the air. Every crackling inch of growth ached him in a bizarre way, like the pain was outside of his body but eerily present.

He glared at the monitor as all ten elongated fingers reached closer and closer to the ground. Their bizarre twisted shapes made no sense, even as the itching of forest scales washed over them. Things only clicked for him when sheets of green flesh expanded from the crevices, pinching and pulling angrily at the skin. One by one, the gaps between each digit filled with a thick, leathery membrane.

They looked like wings. Big. Scaly. Monstrous. Wings.

"Jesus Christ..." he muttered in shock. "I look like a bat."

"No, no, we have a bat already. Frankly, she's a nuisance, but she's not bad at recon. No, you're more than just another hybrid, my boy. You will be the stuff of legends. You... will be my new best friend."

The winged man glared at him in confusion. As soon as he thought he understood the mind of mad doctor, another rug was pulled from under his warping feet -- which were starting to go number from the constricting sandal straps.

Pinehurst clicked his remote at the middle monitor once again. The screen cut to black. "You have two options when the day is over. Either we ship you off to Virginia for combat training and deployment. Boo, lame. Or...you work with me in the lab, and we can build this paradise."

He pointed to the blank screen as a bouncy, percussive rhythm filled the previously dead air. Chimes and a xylophone rang out on opposite sides of the room. Apparently, the doctor asked for surround sound.

The strum of an acoustic guitar built on top of the beat as the dark monitor faded into a scenery of lush green trees and blue skies. Gone was the obnoxious PowerPoint. Instead, it was replaced by saturated colors and vibrant illustrations of suburbia.

As the shot panned into a little blue house on a big green hill, a bright harmonica sang along with the chorus.

Arthur's soul left his body.

"Drewey's song, Drewey's song, join the fun and sing along! Come on down, no time to waste! Let's all go to Drewey's Plaaaaace!"

"You're fucking kidding me..."

"When this premiered on TV last year, it blew my mind. I loved it, my kids loved it. I bought all the merchandise. So when I had the opportunity to model today's experiment on my own hybrid design, well, I couldn't miss the chance."

Arthur wanted to fly off a cliff -- without his big, scaly wings.

"We knew flight was possible, and of course scale-based armor plating. So a flying lizard didn't take much convincing. And who doesn't like dragons, am I right?"

The realization fueled Arthur's rage like never before. He was turning into, of all things, that goddamn dragon. He writhed desperately in his restraints, cursing his own deformed body for not having enough strength left to break the straps. Weren't dragons supposed to be powerful? Terrifying? Village-leveling? Or was this particular dragon too weak to hurt a fly?

"Now it wouldn't be legal for me to, say, de-age you or overwrite your personality and make you into something you're not, but I'd hope that, since you'll bear the moniker of a famous childhood icon, you won't do anything to besmirch the name...Drewey."

"I'm gonna fucking kill you!"

"Ok see, that sounds like an awful lot of besmirching going on. Please don't make me muzzle you."

Muzzle. That struck a chord with Arthur in the worst way. He'd spent enough time in that dreaded costume to know every inch. The giant paws. The clunky wings. The goddamn boiler of a snout.

"God, am I gonna breathe fire now too?"

"Obviously not. Drewey doesn't breathe fire because only grown-up dragons learn to do that. Haven't you watched the show, Arthur?"

"I'm not fucking five. And I'm not. Your stupid. Dragon!"

"Not yet, my boy. Good dragons don't wear shoes indoors."

Pain lanced through Arthur's feet as the change ramped up once more, each mutation coming in waves. The reptilian man struggled in his restraints, flopping his scaly feet around like a beached trout. Even when the balls of his feet passed the lip of the insole, his obstinate sandals held on for dear life, maintaining their chokehold around his heel and mid-foot.

Perhaps the pressure became too much for Arthur's pinky toes. Without warning, the digits clenched inward before sinking slowly into the ball of his foot. The pain was targeted, small in size, but focused and searing, and the vulgar sight made him gasp aloud. He tried to resist the pull, to splay his toes out as far as he could, but the little digits were apparently useless by dragon standards. Like melting iron, his flesh bonded together and cannibalized his toes, nail and all.

Far above them, Arthur felt the same liquid pain flow through his pinkies and knew they weren't long for this world. The joints curled against his will as the two smallest fingertips merged with the skin of his palm and allowed the bones within to break down into atoms, nothing more than fuel for his changes. He twisted and turned his hands in denial that two of his own fingers had simply vanished from existence. While desperately searching for their remains, the freshman noticed that his fingernails looked unusually white -- and they definitely weren't that sharp this morning, or even five minutes ago.

From tip to cuticle, his nails took on a new glaze of shining ivory polish, certainly not one he chose to apply. His eyes darted to the sixth monitor, which captured his toenails in full view. To his dismay, they were equally as sharp and shimmering. The nails of his big toes were the worst offenders, as they started lengthening and widening to gruesome points. They were growing bigger than the digits themselves.

His sixteen thickening nails curled down like the claws of a beast. No, there wasn't any "like" in this situation. He was growing purely animal claws, and the ones on his feet jutted out far past his damn sandals. Even equipped with such weaponry, his massive feet remained helpless against the cruel footwear that contained them. The plastic straps clamped down on him like a straight jacket, bruising what little remained of the human skin on the tops of his feet. He wished he could tear them apart, even if he had to use his new monstrous claws.

"Get....get them off!" he pleaded as he gripped the chair, his new talons digging holes into the fabric. As his warping arches continued their sluggish, agonizing expansion, his clawed toes twitched and shook in the wind.

At last, the tension grew untenable. With a symphony of clunky snaps like breaking guitar strings, the top and rear straps tore away from their foundations, liberating Arthur from this particular part of his never-ending torture. He watched his own vindication on screen as the broken brown sandals fell and clattered onto the tile below, leaving him truly barefoot once again. As gracious as he was for the release, Arthur's jaw clenched as he saw the entirety of his overextended soles, now covered completely in yellow scale bands from heel to toe tip. He'd grown at least three shoe sizes in just a few minutes.

"Goodness, what a wonderful shot!" the doctor chirped with joy. "Those sandals held fast, far longer than the last brand we tried. I'll have to buy a pair for myself."

Arthur caught his breath as if the straps had constricted around his lungs. "Are...you...stupid? Why the fuck...did you put these on me...if I wasn't gonna fit in them?" The deep purple indents left on his feet throbbed in pain, but the discoloration wouldn't last as an ascending wave of olive scutes overtook the marks. Though feeling slowly returned to his remaining toe tips, his two largest toes kept aching in the worst of ways, as if the binding pressure had yet to release them.

"Well, there was this episode where Drewey drank a potion from a scary wizard and grew too big for his treehouse. And that scene started with him bursting out of his sandals. I swear that unlocked something in me. Especially at the end when he learned to trust his friends more, that really resonated --"

Arthur stopped listening halfway through the obnoxious synopsis. His attention focused solely on the gripping pain in his big toes. They felt stubbed and yanked on in equal measure. He tried to wiggle the sensation out, but it wasn't working. The digits throbbed visibly as their massive claws continued to grow, nearing an inch in length past the skin, but that's not what caused the pain.

It was something more. It was pressure swelling beneath the skin. It was friction cutting down to the bone.

Invisible forces encircled his toes with a stranglehold nearly as tight as the long-forgotten sandal straps.

The drones zoomed in on his toes in ominous portent, heralding the oncoming disaster.

CRUNCH! SNAP!

Like the crash of a bullet train, a sharp shattering crunch of bone split the air in twain.

"F-Fuck!" Arthur's agonized scream followed like a charging battle cry.

The freshman had broken his biggest toes. Or rather, the toes broke themselves. His digits had wrenched out to the side at a sharp 90 degrees like they were born to be thumbs instead of toes. Their distorted positions would've reminded him of a monkey's paw, if not for the claws and scales.

"Arghh! Haa, oh God...they're broken," he screeched, eyes locked dead on his twisted toes. They twitched sporadically and sent jolts of pain up his feet with every jerking motion. Bone ground against bone under his skin no matter which way they moved. It seemed like they were trying to return to their homes, but couldn't close the gap.

"Not broken, Arthur. In fact, they're being fixed. Your big toes aren't useful in their original spots. After all, they're mostly made for balance, and you're not going to be balancing on your heels anymore."

The drones around his legs reconfigured their formation, zooming out just as the pain in his toes spread like an inferno across his feet. Heat wrapped around his arches once more in the timeless conquest of his formerly human body. Now free from their synthetic confines, Arthur's feet took the liberty of expanding to their final length. More murderous creaking of bone and sinew poisoned the air, stinging the poor young man's ears. He screeched and hollered as his soles continued advancing forward, pushing his toes further and further from his body. His big toes were moving as well -- backwards.

"Shit! Shit, stop!" Arthur pleaded. The migration of his large toe joints sent molten pain through the insides of his arches. Watching the twin digits wrench in reverse like jerking stick shifts, then slowly wriggling upwards gave him a sickness in his stomach that he couldn't fully describe or be rid of. They looked so woefully out of place halfway up his foot.

Fulfilling their duty without hesitation, the fleet of circling drones captured every angle of his poor feet warping beyond recognition. The six remaining digits at the forefront of his legs began swelling and curling, plumping up like green golf balls tipped with silver daggers. Each twitching toe and strung-out tendon became crystal clear on the HD wall looming down at him, every screen reflecting back a shot of his misery. Arthur thought of all the people who would eventually see his mutation on playback. Would they laugh, gawk, or gasp as his big toes slid higher and higher up on his feet? By now, they hung awkwardly next to his heels like animalistic dewclaws. How high could they possibly go?

CRACK! CRACK!

Arthur yelped once more, his throat growing raw from his constant string of wails. The twisted joints of his big toes rotated again around his feet_._ They had made a trip halfway across the world and retired, of all places, on his heels. In a bizarre caricature of flesh and scales, the young man now had toes on the undersides of his feet -- though they were more claw than toe at this point.

He wouldn't have been able to see them if not for the cameras, but there they were in all their horrible glory. Razor tips coated in white. Green, scaled flesh rounding out the base. The joints had fused completely with the largest bone of the heel and locked them into a permanent bend under his feet. All mobility disappeared, leaving no trace but the phantom pain and stiffness drilled into the backs of soles.

Despite their lack of a flexible joint, Arthur remained keenly aware of his big toes' new resting spot -- the notion filled him with existential dread. His mind still registered the rear claws as toes, but they felt utterly out of place and surreal, like his anatomy had been abstracted into an Escher sketch. Twisted, yet purposefully calculated in their displacement. He tried wiggling them, but his brain simply couldn't connect to tendons that no longer existed. Part of him wished he could reach down to feel them, just to comprehend their persistent existence and function, but there was no choice other than staring from a distance and mentally trying to bridge the gap. His former big toes languished alone in a state of permanent paralysis, bizarre and uncomfortably misplaced on what were once his typical human feet. He couldn't fathom how he'd grow used to such an inhuman awareness.

While he ruminated over the terrifying nature of his reptilian lower legs, shimmering jade overtook the skin entirely, meeting with their yellow counterparts on the edge of his arches. The six claws on his front-facing toes emerged fully, each one a lethal threat to flesh and fabric alike. Were he ever to land in the midst of a battlefield, he could crush any human underfoot and pierce their armor in an instant. Just one more ghastly realization that would haunt him. With its green and gilded wrapping, the transformation of his monstrous feet had reached a grand conclusion, one that made Pinehurst cheer like a petulant toddler.

"Yay, Drewey has his big boy paws! Way to go, sport!"

Sweat birthed from agony rolled down Arthur's forehead as he glared down at his misshapen feet. His soles finally surpassed any human shoe size, to the point that his talons could scratch at the floor below. Every toe left alive looked more at home on an animal's hind leg. He curled them once just to make sure they were real and still under his control. Yes, indeed they were.

Reality set in, chilling the young man to his disfigured bones. It finally occurred to Arthur that he'd never walk normally again, not with his feet so long, and certainly not with giant claws poking out from the back of them. He'd have to bend his knees just to walk and lurch about like a beast, forced up on his toes and constantly trying not to pitch over. Is this what the doctor meant by digitigrade? The idea made him ill beyond belief.

Arthur would walk the Earth alone with a naked vulnerability -- barefoot forevermore.

He was a freak.

He was a monster.

He was totally fucked.

Not missing a beat, an array of drones zoomed in on his thighs visibly throbbing in his jeans. The mutagenic serum continued to infest his cells, reinforcing both femur bones while the surrounding muscle tightened and pulsated with enhanced strength. He winced as the fabric constricted against his skin and swampy green patches swam up his binding pants leg like a network of encroaching vines. He knew denim would be a mistake today.

The great scale migration itched up past his waistline and speckled his lower back before joining up with the patchwork on his wings. Hidden beneath his clothing was a mire of thick verdant plates just waiting to be exposed to the world. As the sweat-soaked fabric chaffed against his back, it was enough to make Arthur wish the man removed his shirt entirely. This became exceptionally true when the heat cranked up to more nerve-searing pain.

Arthur cursed as he twisted about in his chair, struggling to relieve the sweltering pressure that pummeled his lower back. He grit his teeth, breath hot and desperate. The ache sunk as deeply as the pulling sensations in his feet. If his toes had torn away completely from their joints...what the hell would happen to his spine?

"Like most of your silly little baby human bones, your vertebrae need to be a lot stronger to carry around those wings. Plus, we made a few additions back there." The doctor sauntered behind him, reaching between his wings and lifting the bottom hem of his shirt. His timing seemed perfectly calculated when the mounting tension reached its zenith. Hard rippling cracks shot down his back like rolling thunder. Shocks of pain, fast and hot, pierced his spine as every bone in the column realigned and pushed up visibly against his skin. Their expansion formed big bulges under the scale pattern -- shimmering green hills like those in that vapid cartoon still playing on the monitor. However, the bumps grew more pointed, more refined, bigger and wider.

With a wet squelch, for the first time, something pierced his flesh.

Arthur whined in head-splitting agony, curling forward in his chair. His scales had parted without effort, or blood oddly enough, as his back gave birth to bony white shards, each capped by a point not quite as sharp as his claws, but equally as firm. Through tired eyes, he glared at the monitors as the shark-tooth spears made a home atop his plated skin.

"Goddamnit! What the hell are those things?"

"Spikes, Arthur! Excellent spike growth! These will improve your balance and the strength of your backbone without sacrificing flexibility. And they're perfect for rear defense. Just imagine if you fell onto someone, or if they charged you from behind. You'd impale them like a porcupine!" The thought of very spine becoming lethal made Arthur's face turn pale.

As grotesque as the spires were, the reptilian man could feel instinctually that his dorsal side wasn't finished rearranging itself. A cruel tearing pain spiraled down past the lowest spike, just above his rump. Squelching and crunching noises harmonized in a discordant symphony as hot, warping tissue spun around beneath his skin. His tailbone, or what Arthur assumed was his tailbone, suddenly sprung into a dance of its own. Muscles once lost through evolution returned in time to join its tango, as they tied tightly to his coccyx bones and began to lead -- stepping closer and closer to the surface of his skin. Ancient bones unfused and began to grow, to multiply, building up more and more pressure in his backside until it hit a crescendo.

"Here comes the tail...hello tail..." Pinehurst sang with juvenility.

Arthur screamed like the bones were tearing out of his body. They were certainly trying.

Following the lead of his massive wings, a hard lump forced itself from his frail body and pushed against his underwear for just a second before finding its way to the provided exit hole. The worm wriggled out of its denim confines as it grew thicker and scalier, swelling from the width of a twig to the depth of a tree stump. With every beat of his three-chambered heart, new vertebrae formed under his flesh, expanding and swelling without remorse.

RIP!

Fabric tore asunder. The base of the green behemoth rented his pants so wide that the groin threatened to split itself next. Arthur sat in agony as his new tail snaked down to the floor, the cold tile chilling its scaly yet sensitive yellow underside. The damn thing was nearly as thick as his thigh and long as his legs. One of the drones had to zoom out just to keep it in frame.

"No, no, no, I can't have a tail! I can't have a fucking lizard tail!" he yelled at the monitor for displaying such an abomination on his backside.

If only "can't" carried any sort of weight in his reality now. The thick appendage -- distinctly reptilian -- whipped wildly behind him, reacting poorly to his panicked state. He barely noticed the pain of ivory spines sprouting along its length, dividing its forest of solid green scutes. Arthur didn't want to believe it was part of his body. He couldn't fathom that it was real at all.

"You may not realize it yet, but that hunk of a tail is incredibly versatile! It's great for balance, combat, juggling. Just don't sit on it. We've had to order so many custom chairs for you guys, it's crazy."

With his tail completely covered, the production of scales went into overdrive, consuming the rest of his torso and climbing up to inscribe his neck with a ring of plates. His head twisted about, trying to scratch his chin and shoulders as best he could. When the doctor stepped in to help, Arthur wanted to sock him.

Pinehurst eagerly scratched the young dragon's shoulders and pulled the neck hole of his shirt down to measure the progress.

"Your chest is totally wrapped in scales now. It's a great look on you," he said with a smile. His captive scowled and turned his head away in revulsion. "You can probably tell that your transformation is almost done. You've got the paws, the claws, the scales, the tail. And oh my, those wings are such beautiful things."

"Are you fucking singing right now?"

"It's from the show, not that you'd know. I don't understand how you played Drewey for so long without understanding his character or source material. Perhaps you weren't cut out to be an actor after all."

Arthur whipped his head around with wide eyes. "Have you just been stalking me this whole time?"

"Well, why do you think I chose you for the part?"

Every one of the boy's talons clenched. The restraints on his limbs just saved the doctor's life.

"Speaking of, I think I deserve a big, friendly thanks for not changing you more than necessary. As much as the boys in Washington wanted to see you down on all fours, I fought adamantly to keep you bipedal. Some of us believe in staying lore-accurate. So, in return, I'm gonna need you to do me a big ol' favor..."

He leaned in close, his nose just inches from Arthur's own.

"Grow that cute little snout."

If Arthur's mouth weren't so dry, he'd have hocked a loogie at the man. Instead, the desert heat in his face turned scalding, itching madly as green flecks dotted Arthur's cheeks and around his eyes. His brows contorted as the skin grew tough and unyielding. Before the marching scales could ascend to his scalp, however, a distinct burn lit itself at its peak. Something else would claim the territory first.

Straight from Hell itself, twin pokers stabbed up through the top of Arthur's head and let loose a ghastly sensation of flames. His eyes clenched tight as he whipped his head about in a frenzy.

"Shit! Shit! My skull's on fire!"

The familiar pain of bony growth tortured his wretched scalp. With bitter squelches, the two shimmering knives slid up past his brown hair, the tips parting it cleanly, effortlessly, but not without drilling anguish shooting back down into his brain. The bony masses grew directly from his skull, as deep as the ache was, to a distinct three inches in height. Arthur's eyes turned to saucers as the white spires filled one of the monitors before curving back at a gentle angle. Amazingly bloodless, but no less morose, his ivory horns took their place atop his head like a wretched crown.

"Ah, the horns! Made of refined calcium and perfect for smacking into things or hanging clothes to dry. Probably stung growing straight from your skull bone, huh? I know they look small now, but we expect them to grow over time as you do. Nineteen is still pretty young in dragon years."

The sight of spikes jutting from his skull filled the young dragon-to-be with disdain. He was doomed to be a monster, an off-brand bootleg of a stupid man-child's stupid obsession. As scales slid around the back of his neck and subsumed the cartilage of his ears with a rude pinch...he knew what was coming next. He knew the change was unbeatable. This battle was over before it started.

His eyes flickered from the screens to the army of drones responsible for their maddening displays. As one bug descended to eye-level, its single black retina staring him blankly in the face, a last-ditch instinct came to the theatre major's mind. He couldn't fight this. He couldn't run away. He couldn't fly away. His only power, his only marketable skill, was appealing to the humanity of his callous observers -- a humanity that would leave him soon enough. They couldn't help him now, nor would they want to, but perhaps someone, anyone on the other side, would think twice before performing this heinous act another time.

Staring into the camera, Arthur gave the most honest performance of his life.

"My name...is Arthur Pryce. I'm nineteen years old. I'm a freshman at NYU. And I'm human, just like you. Even if I look like this, I'm still a person on the inside. What he's done to me...it hurt...so much. It's torture. It isn't right. What if this was happening to you? Or, someone you love. I have a family too. My Dad is sitting at home, waiting for me to call. And I just...I love him a lot, even if I don't always show it right --" A dry cough choked off his words. His throat ran raw from screaming and the dehydration, but that wasn't all what stalled him. His larynx had tightened up. Pressure started building in his face. A twitching ache flared up in his chin, his lips, his nose, his teeth. Everything ached. His head could explode at any second. He dug his claws into the armrests, his talon toes scratched anxiously at the ground, and yet he forced through the pain. These were the last words he'd speak as himself.

"Please, you can't let him do this again. Don't let anyone else end up like me. And if you can, you've got to help me," he whispered in a final plea as the flames of change engulfed his tongue and throat. His soliloquy would be woefully cut short.

"Help me...please...help...help meeeee --" Desperate cries turned to shrill shrieks as Arthur's skull cracked like thunder, his jaw snapping open and breaking away from its hinges. His face thrust forward like a saber through his heart to slay his humanity. Centimeter by centimeter, more bone birthed itself under his skin, expanding his jaw forward and wide like the front of a warring bomber plane.

Drool pooled in his underbite as the space in his mouth grew larger by the second, the spit bubbling and overflowing onto his shirt. He begged for mercy, but his inarticulate, garbled, guttural words drowned in his own saliva. No salvation would find him. Instead, from deep within the new bone of his jaw, a dozen little daggers took root and rose to greet him, stabbing up through the ailing flesh of his mouth. Arthur's gums leaked hot, red iron as more and more jagged teeth filled his broken jaw with a field of murderous bone shards. Like the remnants of a battlefield, his mouth contained a long line of violent white blades, stained with blood and spit. He was the monster in this battle. He was the dragon. Would he lose his mind as well? Kill everyone in the city? He had no sense of how far this torture would progress, or what would be left of him when it ended.

Arthur's upper jaw would not be left out of the fray, so it forced its way forward at a similar, though slightly behind, pace. His fleshy human nose came along for the ride and collapsed down into his increasingly reptilian skull with a CRUNCH. Through wet, squinted eyes he watched his entire face protrude before him while flawless green gems sprung up along the sides. He wanted to be rid of it, to force it back by hand if necessary, but that was all impossible. A bestial muzzle had been cursed upon him, obstructing his blurry vision along with the falling ash, an apparent remnant of the ungodly burning atop his scalp.

No, the "ash" was brown...too long and fine to be cinders. Of course. It was just his hair. The scales were sweeping over his scalp, sealing his pores and cutting off his hair from the roots. Sweaty strands of brown evacuated their pores and jumped for dear life, their dermal homes now conquered by the onslaught of green reptilian flesh. He had so little body hair before that he hadn't noticed it trickle away from his arms and legs when scales had overwhelmed them prior. All he could focus on was his increasingly bald head shining on the cameras. He looked like his father with added verdigris.

His brows and lashes soon followed, falling to the ground weightlessly. With them came the rest of Arthur's hot tears, flowing down the sides of his growing snout until the ducts in his eyes sealed over. A golden glow burnt into his corneas as his iris shifted to a proper slit shape. Even his eyelids stung when a second pair formed underneath them. These were translucent, mucus-lined, and beyond Arthur's immediate control. He could barely see when they flickered, but he certainly felt them each time.

With a final raucous CRACK, Arthur's animal maw reached its proper length -- a cruel six inches away from his face -- and the transformation popped his lower jaw back into place with a painful SNAP. He was lucky he didn't bite into his tongue, which was already setting itself a light. The pink thing grew longer and slimmer than it had any right to be, the tissue within strengthening until it became entirely prehensile. He winced as it thrashed about in his mouth, his nerves unused to this new level of precision. For good measure, the tip stung momentarily as it split down the middle. It couldn't look too human, after all.

The last micro-changes in his body came and went, forever stripping the young man of his humanity. Heat ravaged the old bones and muscles of Arthur's body, strengthening them and affirming them for peak physical performance. Scales in one of two colors bathed him in a shimmering glow and left no inch of skin unturned. From horn to wing to talon to tail, each new part of him felt alien and unwelcome. Things had grown, shrunk, rearranged, or downright disappeared. He was lost in his body. Every angle of his form plastered on the monitor stack looked unrecognizable like a grotesque beast had devoured him, stolen his clothes, and taken his place in the chair. If only that were true.

That was truly Arthur Pryce up there in his big, onscreen debut.

An overeager clapping thundered throughout the chamber. The bouncing reverb made Arthur's augmented eardrums ache.

"Oh, Drewey, look at you! Without a doubt, you are my finest creation yet. I couldn't be more proud. We're going to do such extraordinary things together."

Arthur failed to reply. No signal could reach his malformed mouth or nonexistent lips. His mind remained his own, though exhausted and reeling, and his head still ached from its massive reformation. He couldn't comprehend everything that must have changed inside him, let alone how he survived it all.

"I know you've been through a lot, so I'm giving you the rest of the day off. We'll begin our work in earnest tomorrow. Before you go, however, I do have one more teensy, tiny request." Pinehurst smiled softly, and Arthur was in no position to decline, lacking both the physical and mental wherewithal to form words. His eyelids hung heavy on the verge of collapse. They just barely communicated an eye roll of annoyance.

The good doctor took this gesture as an affirmative. From within his pocket, he fished out a grey walkie-talkie and pressed eagerly on the button. It was probably the lab's only link to the outside world.

"Princeton, can you come down for a second? I have a surprise for you."

He received a reply not in words, but a despondent sigh and shuffling of footsteps before the receiver disconnected. Even in his disassociated state, Arthur could feel the annoyance sizzle through the radio. He had the same reaction to Pinehurst's company.

Whoever the doctor invited was taking their sweet time. When the lift finally opened at the far side of the room, the dragon boy had regained some sense of self. He remembered his name, all the details of his day, all the trauma he just experienced. Thankfully, he wasn't a mindless killing machine, but the anxiety left him tense. He flinched when the elevator doors screeched open.

Fear urged him to turn around, but his stupid wings immediately blocked his view. His eyes darted for the monitors instead and searched for a good angle. He could hear the approach of squeaking sneakers and, of all things, the jaunty sounds of Mario Kart.

"What is it?" the voice of a boy yawned behind him. The boy from the reception desk! He could help!

Arthur let out a grunt. "H-Helph...pleassse..." he whimpered out words as best he could, but trying to speak with a snout and forked tongue proved difficult. The weight of his jaws bogged down every syllable, and whether from the change or the constant screaming, his voice burrowed into a rasp he'd never before possessed. His days of singing tenor parts were long behind him.

Princeton, as the doctor dubbed him, didn't understand his pleas -- or else, he ignored them entirely. His eyes stayed glued to the Switch in hand. To catch the boy's attention, Pinehurst gestured grandly like a center-stage villain and pointed to the monitors, where every angle of his master plan sat on display.

"Doesn't he look familiar?" he asked with winking anticipation.

The teen glanced up for a second, his eyes scanning all nine video feeds in an instant before returning to his game with a shrug.

"That's the lab rat, right? But with wings, I guess. A rat with wings." Disinterest dripped like poison from his tongue. Meanwhile, Arthur was amazed the boy could recognize him with a massive muzzle jutting out of his face.

"C'mon, Prin. He's Drewey! Drewey the Dragon?"

"...Like from the show?"

"Yes! You love Drewey. We watched it together all the time!"

"Dad, that was literally a hundred years ago."

"More like a year and a half," the doctor chuckled. "But he's cool, isn't he? He's my new lab assistant. And maaaaaybe your new best friend." His singsongy phrasing wore on both of his unwilling listeners.

"I have friends. You don't need to make me friends anymore. It's weird."

"...Right. Of course...well, I thought you'd...do you want to say hi? We could take a photo together?"

"Nah, I'm good. Anyway, Jason wants to go swimming later. His parents got the pool fixed."

"Uh, are they going to be there?"

"Don't know. Probably."

The elder Pinehurst crossed his arms. "I don't want you two swimming unsupervised."

"He's literally on the swim team. Can you stop babying me? Christ..."

"Okay, okay. Well, let me finish up here and I can drive you --"

"I'll take the bus." Princeton's curt response ended with his shoes squeaking back towards the elevator.

"Don't forget your sunscreen this time!" His father called from across the room. "Wait, what about dinner, Prin? Are you hungry?"

"I'll eat there."

With that, the steel doors closed, leaving the doctor alone with his latest monster. Arthur, in his near-delirious state, wondered if he'd just imagined that whole awkward encounter. Only the cameras would know for certain. Either way, the child's dismissive candor rubbed him the wrong way. He'd go so far as to say it was "dick-ish."

Pinehurst turned back to his subject and sighed. "Well, Drewey...I think you are a wonderful specimen, and I appreciate you so, so, much. Just know that, okay?"

Fortunately, Arthur had long tuned out the bizarre compliments for the sake of his sanity. His eyelids started sagging again.

The man cleared his throat. "Anyway, congratulations on your species reassignment, my boy! Tomorrow our search for the next subject begins. We'll send a driver at eight o'clock sharp, your room will be ready by the evening, and the V.A. will be in touch soon about your benefits package. On behalf of the United States, thank you for your service!"

As Dr. Pinehurst undid the restraints, the newly born dragon slumped down in the chair as his muscles turned to mush. Blood rushed to his head.

The white room faded to black.

...

...

...

"Weeee hate to say goodbye, but bedtime's on the way. So brush your teeth, turn off the lights, it's time to hit the hay..."

The double doors of the science center parted, and a sweltering heat wave awoke the young dragon from his half-conscious slumber. As his wheelchair rolled out into the sun, inch-thick humidity congested his snout, and the light scratched wildly at his eyes. They'd be watering if he still had tear ducts.

"But you don't have to worry, just wake up bright and early. Tomorrow is already on the waaay..."

Dr. Pinehurst relinquished the chair's handles once he finished his serenade and not a moment before. He gave his future lab assistant a soft pat on the shoulder before happily turning on his heels and stepping back inside. As the doors slid shut, a muttered breath connected them one last time.

"Tomorrow's an extraordinary day, Drewey."

It was a soft farewell, something that could only be heard with inhuman hearing.

Arthur gave no reply as his eyes tried to shutter away from the sun. This new world was blinding and terrifying, and he swore that he could see an entirely new color band. However, he couldn't sit in the sun for much longer. He was already baking alive.

Squinting carefully and burying the horrors of the past hour in the back of his hazy head, Arthur dared to rise and face the day. He gripped the arms of the wheelchair and forced himself up, his wings steadily expanding beyond his control. As he pulled his legs from the stirrups and took his first step as a reptile, the feeling of the sidewalk against his feet, or rather his paws, sent a chill of discomfort down his spine and into his tail tip. He could tell that he was barefoot, and yet the rough band of scales wrapping around the ball and toe pads provided a disturbing level of distance between him and the ground. His body floated without the flap of a wing.

Arthur's knees jiggled as he tried to walk on clouds. His entire sense of balance had warped with the rest of his body, and he nearly toppled over as his weight shifted fully onto the balls of his feet. He felt like a clown walking on stilts. Just once did he try to force his heels back to the ground, but the effort made his tendons ache, and when his rear talons clicked against the pavement, he let out a yelp before springing back up to his toes. Those things weren't meant to have weight put on them.

With measured caution, he stepped down from the sidewalk and into the parking lot itself -- a simple act that now required frustrating effort. Despite the firmness of his foot padding, he could feel the uneven divots in the blacktop whether he wanted to or not. The balls of his feet gripped firmly to the scalding tarmac, which merely warmed his foot bottoms in a gentle heat. What once would have burned his sensitive flesh was now an almost cozy lull. Still, he winced. He wished it burnt more. It would've felt normal.

Like walking a tightrope, he set one reptilian paw in front of the other as he navigated back to the van. He'd often see students walking tightropes in the park, string strands tied around two opposing trees for support. He always wanted to try it. Was it easier or harder than walking like a wounded animal? He didn't know. And now, he'd probably never find out.

The lumbering lizard grabbed at the van's hood once in reach. The scalding metal face didn't faze him either. His clawed fingers fumbled with the keys in his pocket and managed to unlock the door without much effort. However, when he tried to shove himself inside, Arthur came to some obvious revelations. Firstly, his wings wouldn't fit. At all. With what little muscle memory he had, he tried pressing them flat against his back, but they were uncomfortably cramped between him and the seat. Secondly, how the hell could he drive with digitigrade dragon paws? He could barely fit his legs in, even with the seat pushed back. He was bound to wreck as soon as he pulled out of the lot. Or at the very least, get pulled over somewhere and tased like a rabid animal.

Driving was definitely out. Mary would have to come for the van later. Oh well...

Still, he needed to get home somehow. He couldn't call an Uber, that's for sure. It was such a long walk, and on his aching, mutant feet, it would be a nightmare. There had to be another option.

Maybe...

Could he...

He had the craziest idea. It was insane, but these wings had to be good for something, right? He slid back out of the driver's side and locked up. Crouching down, he made a conscious mental effort to flap his wings for the first time. He waved his arms about to see if that would help. That's what he always did in costume. He even tried to play the part completely and imagine what flying would be like. Closing his eyes, he could see himself in the clouds, the wind rushing past his horns, the sun so close he could see the fires of its golden surface. It was an immaculate view. A sense of calm rippled through him.

Peaceful.

Weightless.

Lighter than air...

Nope. No dice. The best he could get was a wiggle from his left wing. He couldn't even get them moving in synch. Maybe they didn't function as wings at all. Dragons weren't real in the first place, right? His genes were probably just a splice of lizards and a bat. Besides, even if he made liftoff, he'd probably come crashing down and break his neck. He didn't need any more bones breaking today.

It looks like he had to walk after all. Goddamnit.

Arthur had imagined his first walk of shame would be coming home hung over from a frat party. Instead, he was stumbling back, aching but sober, like a baby cow trying to walk its first steps. As he made his first step from road to sidewalk, he could feel innately the difference in the ground's texture. It was solid, less textured than the road. He could tell at a granular level. The sensation twisted his stomach. His feet had never been so sensitive before. Every nerve in his soles went haywire as his toes gripped the ground. It was like his feet could adapt to different environments, providing traction under any condition. So instead of flying, he had the ability to walk. Kind of.

What a stupid superpower.

Step by step, he trudged through the streets of Manhattan and caught the eye of everyone he passed. Some people he even recognized from his classes. They didn't seem to recognize him, thank God. Still, they were all watching. Cocking brows, muttering jabs, hypnotic staring at his cumbersome wings -- down to his protruding muzzle -- then his feet. Every time, their eyes fell to his gross, scaly, giant freakish feet.

Did they even qualify as feet anymore? They're more like paws, if anything. God, he had paws now. What the hell was he supposed to do with them? Maybe he could hide them somehow. Wear giant socks, stockings? No, his claws would tear right through. The ivory daggers of his toes scraped the ground with every step, and it sent shivers up his elongated spine. Even steel boots wouldn't stand a chance. Not that he could even fit his foot inside one anyway.

He was doomed in the footwear department. No more shoes, no more socks. He couldn't even walk with his heels down now. He was stuck standing up on his toes like an animal, like a werewolf but definitively less cool. Flip-flops would be a hazard in their own right without big toes to hold them in place. He recalled how they dislocated, snapping like twigs and worming their way back to his heels. Remolding flesh. Utter displacement. The memory made him ill again. He wrapped his arms around his stomach, hunching over to cover his immutable shame. On instinct, his wings tried to cover his face like a shield, and he had to bat them out of the way before he ran into someone.

Unfortunately, he smacked his right wing into the window of a Starbucks with a THUD. Its outermost "finger" stung from the impact, and he couldn't help but curse aloud. This thump and subsequent "fuck" tore all the tired students away from their textbooks as they gawked at him from the other side of the glass. A legion of brows sprung up at every table. Shit.

Arthur had grown so used to audiences watching him, even as he pranced in the weirdest of costumes, but this was an entirely different experience. Their x-ray eyes scanned him like the lab drones before inevitably falling to his sharp, scaly, hovering heels. The smudgy glass magnified their size. And though he only lacked footwear, he felt entirely naked. He felt like a zoo exhibit.

When a dozen iPhones began to rise like a firing squad, the nervous reptile scurried past the storefront and tucked himself into an alleyway. Maybe they'd chalk him up to an exhaustion-based mass hallucination, or at worst an unabashed cosplayer. If he only were so lucky.

From then on, Arthur thought it prudent to cling to as many backstreets as he could find.

Turning a third corner pushed him further into the labyrinth of back-alley New York. He soon came across the most claustrophobic corridor, his microscopic form suddenly flanked by two towering walls of brick apartment complex. Just moments before, the sun had berated him in the open air, exposing his freakish figure to the world, but now it cowered behind urban mountains. The overcast sent a shiver down his spine, and his tail flicked about in an unwanted yet unavoidable response. He wondered how cold-blooded he'd become today -- more literal than figurative in this case.

Without warmth, without light, the brick surrounding him froze in a gray, stale horror. Cold isolation befell him as he crept down the blacktop path like a lurking monster, a specter in the shadows. The walls, he suspected, would've eagerly closed in on him if he didn't resemble some beast that was meant to reside within them.

Still, he was not welcome in the maze. And he was no longer alone.

Howling wind screeched behind him in fear, in rage. As if to scare him off, the gust funneled in and walloped his back, making his wings flutter like loose kites desperately clutching to their strings. They threatened to ensnare him, and he had to beat the giants out of the way yet again. His vision half-obscured by their might, he stumbled through the shadowlands until his paces stopped on a rather abrupt

CRICK.

A sharp crackling had come from underfoot. Not one of bone, but a brighter crunch and crinkling distinctly outside of his body. Arthur stiffened nonetheless. If he didn't know better, the wandering dragon would've thought he broke ice in the middle of autumn. His head tilted down slowly, carefully, left leg raising, backtracking, just an inch.

He had stepped on broken glass. Barefoot. And he felt nothing. At least, nothing in the realm of pain.

Splayed out beneath him was the carcass of a beer bottle, no doubt left behind by a day-drunk wino or some member of a frat to which he'd never pledge. His sole twisted up, and he could see, even feel, the individual amber shards plucking against his toes, slivers large and small falling off the ball of his foot. He could even feel some wet residue of what was once -- hopefully -- the alcohol. Despite the discomforting visual, the impact didn't hurt. It should've hurt. Badly. But soles had grown too well protected. So horribly defended. Guarded against his will. A dragon, guarded. Ironic.

Even without the alarm of pain, he thought it best not to walk into his apartment with glass dragging on his foot like toilet paper. Arthur rested his palm against the steel-faced brick to his right and reached down to his gangling green limb. He brushed off the bottle with ease, its crystals too scared of him and his invulnerability to cling any longer to his scales.

As he dispelled the feeble brown dust, it was the first time, he realized, that he'd directly touched his scales -- his feet in particular. Disgust dripped into his mind. The logic of his brain begged him to finish up, to pull away and keep walking.......but a kernel of curiosity urged him to notice the viridian plates that had stitched themselves over his skin. Their shine was iridescent even in shadow. Perhaps it was the darkness of the alley and an artist's sense of discovery. Perhaps it was some new, inscrutable instinct in his gut. Either way, he cursed himself for spiraling into such a bizarre self-indulgence.

He knew he was going to regret this.

Without another doubt, he let two fingers skate cautiously along the side of his overgrown foot, tracing inches of flesh that shouldn't be there, miles of scales that shouldn't have seen the light of day. All of it intriguing and maddening. The scales on top of his foot were firm, but not stiff, not rocky at all like he imagined. He'd once pet a classmate's iguana at grade school show-and-tell -- he struggled to remember if it had the same feeling. If so, the likeness was uncanny. Uncomfortable. It was a texture that didn't belong on his body.

Morbid fascination forbade him from stopping.

His touch traveled down to the bands of his sole for comparison. Of course, he could feel the golden grooves in the skin, and he could feel the grooves being felt. The scales on his fingertips were equally as receptive. His brain quickly lost track of what was feeling what, and the whole interaction gave him a nervous itch he couldn't quite scratch. Though his eye twitched from the perverse sensations, his hand continued to run from ball to heel, where perhaps the greatest of his deformities lay bare.

Talon on talon, he tweezed the monstrous claw buried in his heel like a splinter that couldn't come out. Its hard, spire tip jutted up with lethal strength, and yet it was as sensitive as any of his other toes despite sharing few similarities. It too felt the touch of his fingers, almost as easily as his sole had...which made sense since it glued itself right onto his heel. He rubbed the digit's base, where presumable bone met scaly flesh, and worried over its thickness and what might lay below. More claw? More flesh? More uncertainty. If it could still wiggle to any degree, Arthur was sure the claw would recoil from all the attention. His mind certainly had.

And the strangest thing...the talon still felt like his big toe, just terribly misplaced in the disarray of his body. The more he touched it, the more his discomfort grew, bordering on phobia. His heel and his toe shouldn't have been in such close proximity. Their fusion was nonsensical. Arthur's human anatomy had been taken apart like the LEGO sets of his youth -- plastic long discarded of his own volition after the age of 12 -- and rearranged in an utterly contemptuous protest against the provided instructions. Strengthened by force. Barefoot by force.

The design was absurd, cartoonish, and childish in a way that Arthur detested at his core.

Amid his reluctant expedition, another shrieking updraft pushed past him, purging him from its grim domain. This time its cold fingers clawed at his feet, shooting icy spikes through his calf muscles. Arthur's shoulders tensed, and he fell against the wall. His shaky breath matched his visible shudder as the chill forced his toes into a gnarled curl that bunched up the scale bands on his foot bottoms. Apparently, his feet were impervious to glass, but a simple breeze could leave them in a paralyzed stutter. Perfect.

His toes kept wriggling haphazardly until he slammed his leg down, just barely avoiding the Modelo rubble beneath him. And yet, even with his feet planted, the selfish whirlwind whipped at his clawed heels and the exposed parts of his soles, which was most of them. His six talons pressed into the asphalt as if to dig for shelter. A nervous whimper escaped him, though he scarcely noticed it as he took off down the alleyway, his hobbling gait made faster only by the support of the wall adjacent.

As quickly as he burst out of the corridor and stepped onto his street, the wind's wail silenced behind him, its temper satisfied once the stray animal had been shooed from its home. Busy motors and taxi horns replaced the noise as sunlight swirled around his silhouette.

Arthur took a moment to catch his breath. But when his eyes drifted down to the pavement and his grizzly toes, he yanked his gaze up by force. Whatever happened back there was something he'd have to bury in his brain -- a horrific temptation that he would never submit to again. His last shard of humanity couldn't take the hit.

Making good on that promise, he spun a hard right, left the alley behind, and pressed forward into more familiar terrain.

His hundred-year journey concluded, perhaps his last romp ever through the city, when he unlocked the front door and tucked in his wings to wedge himself inside. The sudden feeling of carpet fuzz scratching under his pudgy toes made his eyes twitch uncomfortably. He shouldn't have felt the individual grooves in the fabric under his feet, but he did anyway. He was never going to get used to that.

A distinct lack of roommates greeted him -- a miracle in Manhattan, to be sure -- so no one cared when he slammed the door behind him. Only his growling stomach made any sort of complaint. Despite its petition, however, Arthur couldn't be bothered to walk three more feet into the tableless kitchen and microwave one of four ramen cups littering his otherwise vacant, doorless cupboard. These tradeoffs were, allegedly, the costs of living alone on an island.

Exhausted, frustrated, and too self-loathing to think straight, he crossed to the old burgundy couch he bought off Facebook and kicked away the wobbly coffee table so he could get through. His big green body flummoxed onto the cushions, facing inwards so as not to crumple his wings or tail any more than necessary. Finally, he was up off his overly sensitive feet -- or paws, whatever you wanted to call them. It was time to curl up and vanish from the world.

Unfortunately, he couldn't find a moment's peace, let alone one so eternal. His phone started vibrating in his pocket. It wasn't stopping.

With an exhausted sigh, he yanked out his device and tried not to scratch it up with his new claws.

Mary was calling. Shit.

He held it to his face for a scan. Obviously, it rejected him. It probably thought he was a dog poking its snout onto the screen. After a few failed attempts to remember his passcode, he managed to connect the call, and Mary's prying tone subsequently drilled into his ear holes.

"Hola amigo, you home?"

Arthur cleared his throat and made a conscious effort to articulate with his new fork tongue and snout. "N-No..." he lied.

"Cool, I'm coming in."

"W-What?"

The doorknob turned.

"You're lucky I know how to hotwire that van, or we'd both be...whoa..." As her eyes fell on the scaly mass slumped over on the couch, for the first time in eternity Mary had no quips to make. His mutant form had stunned her into silence.

Arthur peeked up from his hiding spot, his face tensed in embarrassment. Rose would've filled his cheeks if they weren't smothered in jade scales.

"You, uh..." She searched for the words as she lightly closed the door behind her. "You really committed to the Drewey bit, huh?"

"Shut up," Arthur groaned, forever digging his horned head back into the cushions. He still wasn't used to the added gravel in his voice.

"Which is kind of unfortunate since you're fired."

The dragon boy rose from his burial site. "Fired?"

Mary snorted as she crossed to the couch and sat on the arm like a child. "You left the van unattended for three hours. That's like gross negligence, not to mention child endangerment."

"Child??"

"Drewey! He's like 12, and you left him in the hot backseat. Have you never watched the show? There's a whole episode about it."

Arthur groaned again. This time, it verged on a growl.

"If it makes you feel better, Bobby Bobcat got kicked in the nuts again today."

It brought no comfort to the reptilian boy. The physical and psychological torment he'd experienced far overshadowed one measly ball tap. He had no sympathy to share at the moment.

"Plus, the Chinese place was out of that spicy eggplant I like, so I guess we're all having a rough week. I need the van keys back, by the way."

Arthur's claws dug into his jeans pocket and tossed them to his now ex-coworker. Of all the things he was leaving behind from his old life, his abysmal employment would surely be missed the least. It was honestly his sole silver lining for the day. He doubted he could fit his snout into the costume head anyway, not to mention shoving his towering twin paws into the shoes. Or worse, they'd ditch the costume entirely and make him walk around barefoot.

His phone vibrated again.

Before he could reach out, a far more human hand scooped it up.

"Mary!"

"I'm trying to help you out, dude. You'll tear up the screen with those claws. Rawr." Her cat-claw gesture had him fuming. "Let's see...you got a Venmo for $500 from Mr. Stanford Pinehurst. God, that can't be a real name --"

Arthur climbed off the couch and pulled the phone from her hands with a throaty growl, a genuine one this time.

"Get out!" Accidentally proving her point, he nearly crushed the device in a four-fingered death grip when it began to shake once more.

It wasn't stopping. Again.

Arthur's golden eyes gleamed down at the screen as it flared up in his palm --

INCOMING CALL: DAD

Fuck. Every bone in his body turned to nervous stone. He was more gargoyle than dragon now. In his stead, Mary cocked her head and peeked at the caller ID.

"Oof. Bad timing, pops," she said, carefully sliding the phone out of his grasp and putting the call on speaker. Arthur unnecessarily ducked back into the couch cushions.

In spite of the boy's terrified reaction, a chipper, bari-tenor voice filled the room with rousing enthusiasm.

"Hiya, Art! Glad I finally caught you, buddy."

"Noooo, sorry, this is his best friend, Mary. Who's calling?"

"This is his father."

"Can I get a name, please?"

"Um, Christopher?

"Oh! Christopher Pryce," she cocked a brow at her scaly new best friend. "Of the Christopher Pryce Science Center on 4th Street?"

The man laughed from the other end of the line. "Is that what they put my name on? All I knew was that it commemorated the Class of 87 or something. It wasn't even that big of a donation. Anyway, it's nice to meet you, Mary! Is Art around?"

"Nah, he's stuck in the bathroom. He ate some bad sushi. Massive stomach cramps. Major diarrhea. He's looking pretty green right now."

Arthur was turning red, at least on the inside. He wished he could blast fireballs in her face.

"Oh no, I was wondering if he was okay. He hasn't texted me back in a while."

"Yeah, sorry. We've just been suuuper busy working together at the party company."

"I didn't even know he had a job. I'm not surprised though, he's so motivated!"

"He is, isn't he? Soooo impressive. He just jumps right into things."

The silent dragon wanted to fly up through the roof and, once more, off a cliff.

"Well, thank you for being a good friend and taking care of him. Let him know that I called, and I sent him a little spending money for the weekend. It should be in his account." Mary watched the notification come through in perfect synch. She stifled a scoff. "Tell Art I love him! Or, maybe don't tell him that? That might be weird if someone else says it...uh...actually...maybe don't tell him I called. I think I've been bugging him too much."

"No worries, Mr. P. I'm sure he appreciates it. I'll give him the message. Bye-bye."

With a beep, Arthur's father vanished from his life once more. Mary smirked, now on the receiving end of a beast's piercing glare.

"You're welcome," she said. "You dirty little liar."

Arthur's irritation gave him enough courage to try for full sentences again. "You're so...fucking nosy. Anyone ever tell you that?"

"And you're not broke, you're just an asshole. Anyone tell you that? Aside from me, right now?" Mary tossed him the phone. He fumbled it with his claws, and it smacked onto the floor with a thud. Frustrated beyond measure, he lurched forward in his seat, shoving his snout into his hands with a groan.

"Goddamnit! I know, okay?"

"Your dad has a fucking building with his name on it, and you're here slurping Cup Noodle and bitching about your dead-end job. What the heck, man? He sent you cash, by the way. A little spending money."

The young Mr. Pryce peered down past his fingers and saw his phone glaring up from the carpet -- judging him in the same way:

VENMO: You got $2000 from Christopher Pryce!

His voice strangled itself in his throat. "You don't get it. I just...I feel like...I haven't earned anything in my life. Ever. Nothing worth, I don't know, something? Dad finally left New York. I thought I could start over. I wanted to do this on my own..."

"Yeah, and look where that got ya, dude."

A muffled sigh slapped against his scaly palms. As much as he'd hate to admit it, Mary was right. It was his own stupid pride that brought him here. That sent him down to the lab in the first place. That cost him his future. He'd never be allowed in public again, let alone perform for anyone. Tomorrow, he'd be trapped inside a basement, forced to torment others the way he had been -- and if he refused, he'd be shipped off to war or some other lab to be experimented on. His path was forever altered, much like the feet with which he'd have to walk it.

This was the price of his freedom.

Arthur reached down for his phone as the closest thing he had to a friend plopped onto the couch. She couldn't resist poking at his wings.

"Hey, I do get it. You had a rough day. Losing your job and all, it really sucks. But don't bottle your shit up like a big green baby. If you need help, fucking ask."

Her finger tapped the screen in his hands, sending as clear a message as possible through his thick skull.

"Do you need help, Dre --" For once, Mary stayed her tongue. "Do you need help, Arthur?"

The boy took in a deep breath and let out a bestial huff.

"...I need help."

Her fist nudged into his shoulder. Despite the new armor, he clearly felt the impact and winced.

"Cool. Then let's call back Papa Pryce."

As Arthur's thumb hovered over the dial, Mary reached into her pocket and dropped her infamous plastic bag onto the stained coffee table. He watched with tired yellow eyes as she rolled a blunt in record time and held it up to his snout.

"But first...can you breathe fire or what?"

-------------------------------------------------FIN------------------------------------------------