Gumiho: Our Life Has Just Begun (2)
Chapter 2
"A hunter?"
I kicked my shoes off when he said it, knowing what was coming. What was bad news for the family was worse news for the perpetrator.
"Yeah, not far away. A few blocks, maybe. Male. Caucasian. Mid forties." Marcus grimly confirmed.
"Not just some person looking to kill foxes for kicks--a 'real' hunter?" I asked him, flustered. "Because that's bullshit. No one in America believes in us; dad says so all the time. It's why we live here, right?" I pleaded with him, vainly hoping my scrutiny would make him ask dad twice. Maybe something'd gotten mixed up.
"You know better than me, kid. People raving about monsters are one thing--we can take that. Heck, we can take the hicks hunting for varmints too--a few losses are part of nature. What we're talking is something big."
"How much does he know?" I asked.
"Enough that your pop thinks he's a threat, kid. He wants you to deal with him personally. Vanish him into the night, the sort of thing you guys are good with." he said, making a 'poof' gesture with both hands. "Don't ask me to second-guess your old man--you know why he keeps me around."
"Okay." I said, nonchalantly. "Not your call, I get it. I'll make him baby food."
"You do that. It's about time your kids got some TLC, anyway, right?" He said uncomfortably, trying to push aside the issue. It didn't bother folks like us, but people who were still alive probably minded it alot. Marcus was still one of those types, and there were things you just didn't go into conversation about, with a human. One of them was ending human lives--that really seems to shake humans up a lot--like they think they can't be allowed to die. Like they think they have a choice in whether they live or die.
I sure wish I had.
"Take care of the kits, okay?" I said, still trying to think of them as someone else's. They were old enough that they'd get by without me for a few hours, if I just tried to think of them that way, and didn't let the mother's instincts take control of my body. I pushed back the three extra pairs of teats, kept them from showing through my guise.
"Count on it. And hey, this time, maybe bring me back a souvenir!" The would-be greaser replied with a cheesy smile. It was a habit of mine to bring back knick knacks, and he knew it all too well.
"Something that won't be traced back to its owner this time? Maybe.You're enough of a risk as it is, Marcus, without wearing some dead man's stolen jacket," I reproached.
"Aww, cmon, you know it was a gift," he said, patting the leather. "It's not like I'm the one who kills them. You're the one leaving evidence at the scene of the cri--" but his joke was ill--recieved. It wasn't normal for me to care, but his casual attitude disturbed me for some reason. He was getting too familiar with our way, for a human.
"Enough!" I barked. "Keep the blinds shut, no answering the door. This is a vacant house, as far as anyone knows, and I'd like to keep it that way."
"Fair enough," he sighed, sitting back down and reaching for the remote. "I'll be on call if you need me to help clean things up."
"I'm a big girl now. I can handle this." I said firmly; and with that, walked out the back door.
*****
The yard was overgrown, grass that looked more like hay blowing seed, the cool breeze rippling through the leaves of trees, and lending a feel of the wilderness to the place.
It was certainly not a house that anyone would want to buy, standing outside it and looking back at the mottled and moss-covered white wood siding. A few loose shingles, holes burrowed by bees, pecked by woodpeckers; shattered windows and a screen door that hung off its hinges. This was the glory of one of us--the mark of a fox's den--a place no human would ever bother settling in. It was certainly not anyone's dream.
No, it was a necessity. Hardly a match by any house's standard, it was home. A new, tidy, clean house felt alien by this point in my life--I only ever saw them when I went to run errands like these, and they bore with them this same sense of foreboding I was feeling now. A sense of alienness--of vacancy. No, this worn-down shanty was my home; my childrens' home. It was a warm, safe place to hide. I needed it.
I walked out into the grass a ways, so that I was away from sight; both from Marcus, and from onlookers on the street around front. Looking into the woods, I recalled the address of the gentleman I was seeking, commited it to memory. It was not the sort of thing a fox needed to know, and I did not want to forget it in the change. I created a pocket in my mind--encapsulated the knowledge I needed to keep, and prepared for the change to come.
Being human, there are things you simply do not do. There is a need to maintain a veil of decency, dignity, and power, when you would otherwise lack it. This was something I had to do away with, in order to abandon my disguise. Most foxes had no trouble with it, but it was always something I, in particular, hated about what I was. So close to the genuine article. It was just a disguise, and yet, so was everything that made a human being. So why couldn't the way I looked be more than just a disguise? Why couldn't it be the real me?
I mused on this as I brushed back my long brown locks, squatted, and did what no human should ever do.
I began to take a dump in the grass. I felt my temperature peak, felt a warmth on my body in the cool breeze as my bowels started to shift. The nub of a tail began to push against the flesh of my backside; my coccyx growing into a real tail. With this change, I felt the pucker of my anus more intensely, taking on a more exposed appearance as my buttocks shrank and tightened, from fat to muscle, my joints re-arranging painfully. What had seemed to be a skirt and panties changed, first losing their fabric tint--from white and plaid to natural tones of greens and browns, then changing in texture, roughening and loosening, becoming thinner and lighter, frills changing from lacy to leafy--and finally, falling from my body as actual leaves and tiny branchlets.
The shit began to press against my willing spinchter, and as it did, my human guise continued its disintegration, my real body awakening more rapidly, as if it had begun to remember how it belonged. I took off my hair--brushed it away as it fell off--nothing more than some dried grass and reeds I'd managed to scrape together from around a creek, and felt with my thickening toepads the pelt of orange that lay beneath--the ears that were my ears--thin broad bells of skin and cartilege, coated in fine fur, cooling my body as the wind blew across them, every little capillary helping me shed some heat from my shrinking, changing form. I lowered them to my head as I continued to relieve myself; thumbs shrinking into dewclaws, my two buxom breasts relaxing back from their arduous role; joining their sisters as meager, hanging animal teats.
I opened my jaws, brown hair still falling, turning to grass as my cute oval face took on its proper visage--lips darkening, my nose flattening and rolling back, skin breaking into scaley wrinkles that soon consumed it in entirety. Pressure mounting in my rump, I pushed hot scat that spread my anus wide, raising my bushy tail and spreading my pawed legs, new claws gripping the dirt. As it dropped with a soft thud to the ground, my body mounted a full on assault against my human visage, long whiskers bursting from my brows, my nose surrendering to the unstoppable push of a muzzle, new teeth breaking through my gums as old molars fell to the ground, becoming nothing more than a few pebbles.
I felt my skull flatten. I heard the yelps and scuffling of my young. I smelled my own odor--the scent of a fox.
I made my mark, turned to my hindquarters and licked them clean with my broad tongue, and then made off into the woods.
I was born yet again.