Brushstroke

Sure, get your face painted like a tiger at the weird renaissance fair booth. What could go wrong? Explicit.

Stepping into the face-painting tent felt like stepping into another world. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign. The tapestried walls of the tent caught the sun, which illuminated their ornate wheels and intricate knots and meanders in silhouette, and bathed the small tent in bronze light. When the tent flap closed behind me, the noise of the fair became muffled and distant.

Sitting on a stool, behind a podium with 'Face Painting' stencilled on it in blackletter, was a woman in a flowing dress, which might have been purple, but the amber light transformed it into satin black. Her braided hair rolled down her back, to the laces of her leather corset. Leaning on her podium with one elbow, she held between her fingers a small crystal ball. She seemed more interested in it than in me, and she wasn't very interested in it.

"Hi," I said, to break the quiet. "You do face painting?"

Briefly, she glanced at me, then back down. "Hold on," she said, and sat up slightly. With a wave of a finger, a gleaming light flickered into the crystal ball. "Hmm. You came to the fair alone, didn't you?"

I made a shy, shrugging laugh. "Yeah, I guess so."

The glow from her crystal ball lit her arched eyebrows. "You want a more exciting life," she said.

That was fair to say of anyone at a renaissance fair. The way she said it was uneasily accurate, though, like she'd plucked the unrealized thought right from my mind. I nodded quietly.

"And you want me to paint your face...like a fairy," she said, with a lazy wave of her hand meant to be dramatic. "Right?"

A moment's silence passed as I came back to reality. "Um, actually no. I was thinking some kind of animal?"

With a a sigh, an eye-roll, and a snap of her fingers, the crystal ball vanished. "That's a lesson for you. Never buy from fortune tellers." She shook her head, then her eyes focused on me again. She stood from the stool and leaned over the podium. "So. What manner of beast does the fair lady wish to be? I've done panthers, griffins, leucrotta..."

I said, "A tiger would be cool."

Sync

Two strangers become linked during a procedure to transfer their minds into synthetic bodies. Explicit.

Based on a picture drawn by Proxer.

Two days ago, I sold myself off. I should feel worse about going synth. I feel bad that I don't feel worse. I didn't have to. Technically, I had a choice. I could have let myself get evicted, go squat in some alleyway under those sodium piss-lights, and tell myself I wasn't compromising my humanity.

Instead, I tapped a blue checkbox that says 'I have read and agree to the Terms of Transfer' and scheduled an appointment: tonight, at the nearest Adelpha office.

The skyscrapers downtown eat up the amber glow from the night sky. They bounce it back and forth between their windowpanes, speckled with light from the offices of everyone working late. Down on the sidewalks, the street lights pour blue-white glare over me, washed with corporate colors every time I pass a ten-foot illuminated logo.

A helmet-faced, gunmetal gray security synth stops me outside the Adelpha office and runs my credentials. I end up staring into the polyglas door while I wait—it's slicker than water and I can see my reflection in it. I try my best to look tough. If this is the last chance I get to see myself, I want to savor it.

After about half a minute, the synth steps to the side. The door parts and slides open. With a brief gesture, the synth says, "The waiting room is straight down the hall."

The interior of the office is so sleek and rounded that I feel like an intruder. The polished white floor refuses to let my sneakers leave footprints. At the end, the hall opens into a lobby, with white chairs along two adjacent walls and a few tablet readers tastefully arranged on a table between them. There's one other person there. He's about my age, and judging by his worn-down clothes and scuffed shoes, he's in the same boat as me.

The Stream

A livestreamer crowd-sources her own transformation into a cougar anthro. Explicit.

I've streamed like twice before. This time, I'm trying to go big. I've got my desk lamp pitched up as high as it'll go, aimed right at my face. Even though I'm doing the just-rolled-out-of-bed, tee-shirt-and-panties look, I brushed my hair and put on just enough makeup to look like I'm not wearing any.

Last time, I made like sixty bucks in donations. This time, I'm gonna break two hundred.

I open up the streaming client. There's the empty chat room on the side, there's the empty donation log on the bottom, and in the video preview window, there I am. I've got that blank, computer-screen look in my eyes. I tip the webcam up just a little, so it's not cutting off the top of my head, then tuck a stray bit of bangs behind my ear. I mouse over 'start streaming', then click.

Every time you start, there's this pinch, like someone just closed a bag clip against the back of your neck. Still haven't gotten used to that. I reach back and rub that spot. Already there's a couple of viewers on the chat list, though, so I straighten up and smile at the camera.

"Hey, guys."

Each chat message comes in with a tapping sound.

sup

you got a theme for this stream?

I shrug and lean back into my swivel chair. "Nothing much, just relaxing. And yeah, let's make it..." I click the 'theme' dropdown and scroll down till one of them catches my eye. "...Feline."

$20 – Feline pops up in the donation log a couple seconds later.

A shiver runs up the back of my spine. The hair on my neck stands on end, and I can bet that it's thicker, too. The chill feeling dissipates when it hits my scalp, but then I feel it sliding across my ears. When I reach up to touch them, I can feel the fuzz of fur growing along the rims, and the little pointed tips at the top.

"Woah. First time doing species stuff," I say, with a small laugh. There's four people in the chat now, which isn't bad. Last time I topped out at six.

The Girls

Some guy's girlfriend gets turned into a trashy rat girl in the Big Apple. Maybe not quite the Big Apple you're thinking of, but still. Explicit.

Rosa leaned against the railing in front of the windows. The city skyline spilled out on either side of her. She gave me the biggest, toothiest smile she could manage. I held her phone up, leaned back, and tapped the screen. There was a soft shutter-click.

I passed her phone back. "All right. I'm ready to climb back down," I said.

She gave me a confused look, the smile still stuck to her face. "What, you don't want a shot of us together?" she asked.

Before I could tell her she shouldn't be giving her phone to a total stranger, she'd slipped by me and passed it off to a wolf in a track jacket, then jogged back over to me.

Rosa hugged me tight around the waist. The side of her head pressed against my chest. I took a breath, put my arm around her, and tried to smile as big as she did.

***

Standing at the stern of the ferry, Rosa snapped one last picture of the Apple of Liberty, pale green in the afternoon sun. She turned around. The harbor wind pushed back her brown hair, save for a strand or two clinging to the corner of her lips.

"Here," she said, offering me her phone again. "Take a look."

I pressed my shoulder against hers so we could look at her pictures together. There were shots of us underneath the wall of clocks at Times Station. There was one of Rosa pointing up at the impeccably perpendicular corner of the Madison Square Building, and then a matching one of her at the top pointing down. There were shots of the post-modern floral arrangements at the Metropolitan Garden of Art. There were even shots of the hot dogs we'd had for lunch.

I gave her phone back. "That is a lot of photos."

Rosa stuck her phone in her jeans pocket and tugged her flannel shirt tighter against the thick harbor breeze. "We don't get to go on a lot of vacations," she said. "I want to make sure I remember all of this."

I did too. My hand rested on her waist and we leaned together against the wind.

"Hey," she said.

I looked into her eyes.

With a grin, she nodded toward the Apple of Liberty. "I guess that's why they call it the Big Apple, huh?"

I pursed my lips and sighed, which only made Rosa smile brighter.

Spiked

A reality-warping collar turns an office worker into a tough hyena porn star, and changes those around him in pornographic ways. Explicit.

It starts while I'm washing my hands in the bathroom. I look down at the sink, then back up at the mirror, and instead of my tie, I'm wearing a collar.

As collars go, it's not even very work-appropriate.

The band is thick black leather, about an inch and a half tall, studded with round, half-inch steel spikes. It's big enough that I can slip my fist between the collar and my neck and still have wiggle room. There's a clasp in the back. I spin it around so it's facing front, and try to pull it open. It doesn't budge.

All right, fine, I'll just pull the collar up over my head instead. I slide the back up my neck and try to squeeze the front over my chin. Even though it's a loose fit, it's not loose enough to slide off. I keep trying for a good minute, until my neck's pink from the collar rubbing against it. My ears are hot and my face is flushed, too. I let go and it clunks down against my shoulders and collarbone.

If I can't take it off and I can't pull it off, maybe I can cut it off. I've got scissors back at my cubicle. I crack open the bathroom door and peek down the hall before I leave. I don't feel like trying to explain why I'm wearing an oversized punk collar in the middle of the office.

The coast is clear, so I slip down the hall, turn the corner, and see my boss, Tricia, coming my way. She's the sort of person who likes gray suits because 'they're neutral colors' and cares about timesheets and dress codes.

Maybe she won't notice the collar if she doesn't look too closely. I step to the side to slip by Tricia and give her a shy smile.

She smiles back, doesn't even glance at my neck, and says, "Hi, Spike."

I'm already past her, but I stop and pause. Was 'Spike' a dig at the collar? But if she saw it, she would have told me to take it off. I turn back toward her. "Um, what?"

"I was just saying hello," she says with a friendly shrug.

"Yeah, but my name's not Spike."

Tricia frowns lightly, then lifts an eyebrow. "Oh. All right, Mister Ryder," she says with more than a little sarcasm, then turns the corner and walks off toward her office.

My name's not Ryder either.

The Bureau

A fox goes to the Bureau of Orthomorphic Management for a routine appointment and runs afoul of red tape. Mature.

Robin found the yellow envelope waiting in his mailbox on Thursday. It announced, in thick letters, that it was his final notice from the Bureau of Orthomorphic Management, and that he needed to renew his license by Friday or it would be revoked. As well as the final notice, it was also the first notice, and the only notice, that Robin had gotten.

The thought of letting his license lapse as some sort of protest came to mind, but then Robin remembered what a nightmare his friend Nick had gone through when he'd gotten his license revoked. He didn't even get his old name back; he'd had to take a crummy public-access name like Reginald.

So shortly after noon and still a little sleepy, Robin tugged the garage door open, threaded himself between his apartment-mates' cars, and climbed into his own. It wasn't a long drive, but he didn't want to leave his license's fate to the whims of the local bus route.

---

The building of the Bureau of Orthomorphic Management looked like a brick of tofu. It did have windows and doors, which aren't features of tofu, but even the un-tofu parts of the Bureau building were infused with that bland simplicity. Robin imagined vandalizing its facade with spraycans of sauce and spices.

There was a short concrete walkway that led to the front door, guarded by railings made lumpy by so many re-applied coats of black paint. Beside the double doors were two plastic signs mounted to the wall. The first said, 'Bureau of Orthomorphic Management, Regional Office'. Below, next to a small intercom, was the second sign. A drawing showed a stick-figure with large tusks hunched over, trying to fit through a door too short for them. 'Persons needing assistance please press button,' it said.

Robin pulled the door open and stepped inside. The top of the doorframe cleared his ears with two feet to spare. Foxes like him weren't the tallest species, but you'd have to be a giraffe to have trouble with the front door.

Past the front doors, Robin came to the lobby. The lobby was meant to have a directory. But at some point, someone had thought to pin up a sign directing visitors to their department. Then everyone else had realized what a good idea that was, and by now, the lobby had grown into a jungle of signage. Sheets of printer paper with arrows were taped to the walls and pinned to bulletin boards and stapled on top of each other, all begging the reader to follow their directions.

If you were coming to see the Exercise and Fitness Approval Board, that was on the other end of the building. Nonstandard Locomotion Permits could be found on the sixth floor, stairwell access only. The Body Planner's Office announced that it was "on the Mezzanine", which Robin thought was likely a made-up word to trick young interns.