Deserted Pt.1
Part 1
Jonathan was running, but from what, he had no idea. He woke up, and started running; not even knowing why or where. In the middle of the desert at high noon, slowing down wasn't even an option. After three hours in the hot sun, he finally collapsed to the ground. Thirty minutes later, Jonathan slumped the few hundred yards over to a tree to get some shade. It was only eighty degrees but to him it felt like a few hundred. It was hotter than he ever thought it could be and all he could do was pant. Nothing could explain the panting, and there wasn't even any sweat. Shaking off some fatigue, Jon still wasn't feeling right. He sat under the tree looking around to see if there was any water around. It was only desert terrain and some mountains in the distance. Strangely enough, the weird feeling wasn't dehydration, it was something else. Jon wasn't feeling normal at all, but in the heat under the tree, he couldn't remember the last time he felt anything at all. Sleep fell upon him under that tree and the day descended into night and the desert cooled down. The area jumped to life as the sun fell into the horizon and now the domain of the desert belongs to the wildlife: coyotes howl, crickets chatter, lizards run around, and mustangs roam the area peacefully. At the peak of the night, Jon woke up with a startle as something ran across his arm. The something isn't what startled him though, it was his arm that surprised him. There was hair. A lot of hair. There was never this much hair before. As he went down his arm, a scream erupted from his mouth. "Wha... Where are ... my hands?" he mumbled to himself as he stared at the paws that lay where his hands used to be. "These can't be ... can't be ... mine?" Jon turns the paws over and moves them this way and that. "I must be on some kind of drugs, at least the heat went away from earlier." After calming down a bit, the scared confused being stretched out after his nice long nap and about screamed again. He discovered his knees were backwards and covered in hair also. The legs responded as his old legs had but now they worked a little differently. Starting from the ground, Jon finally stood upright. The fog that had covered him had been so bad earlier that his only instinct was to run. In all of the confusion, he hadn't even realized what he was, or had become. The desert made no notice to him being there but all of a sudden it felt like the complete wrong place for him to be at the present moment. "I don't even know what I am and I am stuck in the middle of a desert? Shit, well, I should find a better place than this to stay for a while, I won't make it a week out here." He started to walk towards a break in the mountains, no need to start climbing mountains when he will be out here for an undefined amount of time. It was dark and cool too, walking wasn't too bad, the hard part was to figure out if it took more energy to walk on two legs or four. He rotated out his walking style just so he could practice walking on all fours, as strange as it felt. By the time morning came, the distance travelled from the previous night had been several several miles and it only seemed as if the break in the mountains was half as close as previously thought. A nice outcropping of rock covered the desert floor as the sun rose and he slept soundly in the shade. As the sun started to fade, Jon awoke to a terrible noise that made him sit up so quickly, he smashed his head on the rock above him. "What the hell? Was that a truck horn?" he grumbled as he tried to figure out how badly he was bleeding from his forehead. Stumbling into view, he saw a highway no more than a half a mile away from where he currently stood. Excitedly, he started to follow the road, keeping his distance from the actual road to avoid any unnecessary acquaintances. The lights of a town started to come into view though it was still a few miles away. Jon walked until the sun started to rise. By this point, he was only a mile outside of town, he was walking around the town to see if there was a place he could sleep or maybe some kind of covering so he could go into the town without scaring everyone who happened to look in his direction. Finally, a stroke of luck fell upon him, he found an abandoned house in a relatively discreet location. He snuck in the back door and made sure no one else was there. He could see rather well without lights in the house. In fact, he had never seen so well in the dark, it was almost like he had night vision goggles on. Just to try out his new ability, he scoped out the entire house looking for any signs of life and he finally found one, a rat. Instinct kicked and he lunged at it with full force and grabbed the scared rodent before it could even start to run. Jon happily ate it whole, but then felt a bit disgusted as he realized he just ate a random uncooked animal. He couldn't have stopped himself if he tried though, he was really hungry. At least he finally got something in his stomach. On the verge of collapse, Jon found an abandoned bed with sheets on it. "Finally a real place to sleep" he whispers as he drifted off to sleep trying not to worry about how tomorrow would go with a part-human, part-animal being wandering into town and asking for help. As the sun started to shine in the cracks of the boards that covered the windows, he curled up into a ball with his tail wrapped around him and he drifted off to sleep.
Copyright for the story, storyline, ideas, and characters are mine. Do not distribute without written permission, as if if anyone would want to.