The Blog of Spike Taylor – Part 4

Story by automata on SoFurry

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#4 of Spike Taylor

After a couple of weeks in the hospital, Spike gets home to some interesting news. And more naked pictures of himself on the internet.

Let the second arc begin!


Back From The Dead*

I should probably stop getting into situations where the public can take pictures of my junk.

In other news, I just got out of the hospital earlier today. I've been in a medically induced coma with several tubes down my throat to stabilize my weight. Apparently after the full moon I was so skeletal New Zealand's Next Top Model tried to hire me. Haha!

But yeah, thanks to the hospital for not letting me die, and I guess for treating me for that in the first place. Thanks also to Doctor Keenan for calling the police and hospital to let them know what was up (with the "possessed computer" and on how to treat a werewolf who wolfs out before the full moon).

I didn't have to deal too much with the burns (which were thankfully small, considering; I guess getting abused from changing species at whim made my cells a little more resilient than normal) and the smoke inhalation, so that was pretty cool too. I should be able to make a full recovery. I'm all bandaged up and coughing and doped up, so it's more of an annoyance now than anything else.

I've been told with apparent authority that burnt dog smells a lot worse than wet dog as well. Good to know.

But yeah, next time I engage in any kind of stupid heroics I'm going to schedule it in during the full moon rather than just before.

The people "I" "rescued" are apparently recovering well. They wanted to meet with me, but I declined. I'm sure they mean well, but I've got to get back to some kind of normal schedule.

They're still doing tests on the computer at the university. Naturally they can't just plug it in; I mean aside from being possessed or whatever it got kind of damaged when I threw it out the window or whatever.

That day is kind of a blur for me, and I mostly remember it for tentacle wires and running in fire. "Fortunately" it got on the news, so I'll be able to catch up with whatever the media decided to make up at the time now that I'm out.

Speaking of the media, apparently people are after me. In the good way, so far as that goes.

TVNZ and TV3 each want to have an exclusive interview with me, so at least one of them is going to be disappointed. At least the Maori channel doesn't want to interview me; at least as of yet. Trying to do an interview where the interviewee just says "Kia ora" and the standard Maori phrases most people know would probably be bad.

I guess the Olympics are over now, so they need something else to report on.

I'm going to decline on both interviews. I know I'm probably doing the whole "fifteen minutes of fame" thing wrong, but at least the only people who saw me as "normal me" are the police and healthcare people. I don't exactly feel like showing everyone my real face and being harassed as a minor celebrity, and I definitely don't have the fat to waste transforming a little for an interview.

I'd also like to distance myself as much as possible from the naked photos.

Actually, it's mostly about that.

I got a bunch of mail and messages while in hospital. A bunch from the employees of the company that owned the warehouse, thanking me and wishing me well. A couple from the police as a reminder that they want to take my statement at some point; same as for the university, they ran a few tests on my while I was out, but want as much info on the tentacomputer as possible.

One from the New Zealand Fire Service, thanking/admonishing me for my amateur theatrics. I'll keep that one; you'd be surprised how clever their PR department was.

A large number from women. And men. Of a, let's put this charitably, "romantic" nature. I guess naked not-quite-werewolf me doing heroic rescuing is quite attractive or something. They're going to keep me feeling warm; I'll be using them to start my fires on cold mornings.

A large bunch of mostly unnamed ones calling me all sorts of names from "abomination" to "zzusnini" or something. People, if you're going to write threatening messages to me, at least make them legible. I'll be giving these to the police when they come around.

There were a few that seem to be actually cool. One in particular, actually, that stands out as really cool but in general the global arcane community all sent their best wishes to me.

The cool one is from a minotaur (apparently the CEO of an oil company in Texas; don't ask me, I looked it up and it and he are legit, but it sounds made up) who was in Australia to negotiate mining contracts when my escapades happened, and he's going to be flying over to visit me "when you feel up to travelling again"; he's going to be booking a couple of hotel suites for us in Auckland.

I'm definitely going to that one; I'm mostly interested because he's from Texas, but currently in Australia and is flying over here. Flying. We're not usually allowed to do that, but he is.

I mean, I knew money let you ignore the rules sometimes, but there are pilots who'd risk their own safety to fly people like me around? Something special must be happening, and I'm curious to know how he did it.

Yeah, I know it'll be less interesting once I find out, and that I'm spoiling the magician's secret.

Yeah, my curiosity got me in trouble before.

Yeah, curiosity is really a cat-thing.

Fuck it.

So my plan is:

Eat a lot of food and get as (reasonably) fat as I can before the next full moon (I'm rather thin at the moment, which is a worry).

Meet this minotaur guy - and try not to think of him as delicious walking hamburger meat - in Auckland. Make a nice little holiday out of it.

Play a bunch of games, repair/problem-solve a bunch of tech issues, and try to stay out of the public eye as much as possible.

Then maybe people will forget and eventually I can kind of slide back in to my normal routine.

Also, if you're the guy who I gave my backpack to in Palmerston North, can you give me back my stuff? If not I'm going to get the police involved. Or maybe sniff you out myself. I've got a lot of good PR that I can burn at my discretion. And it's not like there's not way too many of you smelly uni students running around now.

* Note: not actually a zombie; werewolf's enough for me, thanks.