Past Present

Blackshirtboy's birthday present is a free trip to Egypt Times, complete with a new catgirl princess persona. Mature.

Just as you settle down at your desk with some tea, your computer chimes with a new message:

Uh oh.

You pause and double-check to make sure you’re not a panther, or a dragon, or a dog. You’re not. As far as you can tell, all your parts are still in their usual configuration. So you tell Kotep no, and wait for a minute or two to see if they’re going to send you something. When nothing comes right away, you shrug and grab your tablet pen so you can get to work.

A couple minutes into drawing, a warm draft ruffles the back of your shirt. You glance up at the window, which is wide open to the outside, with only a pair of linen curtains to soften the breeze. It’s not getting hot and sticky again, is it? Summer should be over by now. But the fresh air is light enough to soothe rather than stifle, and it carries the dry green smell of date palm blossoms into your room.

You narrow your eyes suspiciously at the window. It’s off, but you’re not sure how. You’re definitely not getting up to stick your head through, that’s for sure.

You turn back to your tablet and keep drawing.

The window stretches taller and taller and its panes disappear completely. Columns rise quietly from the receding walls, growing white and tapering until they blossom into wide lotus-petal capitals, painted red and green and gold. They meet the ceiling, then slowly and steadily push it higher and higher. Your small room isn’t so small any more.

You’re not paying attention to that, though. Your fingertips have turned black.

Black fur, smooth and short, sweeps over your hands. It ripples beneath your skin as it moves and reshapes your fingers, leaving them light and nimble. You barely have time to sit up in surprise before it moves up along your arms, like a pair of velvet gloves being tugged up past your elbows. The sleeves of your shirt cleave away from the rest, fall down your arms, and grip your arms as they re-form into gold armbands inlaid with blue lapis.

Candy Island Vacation

A bag of sour gummy worms brightens up a dreary day inside by turning you into a cartoonishly big candy dragon. Mature.

You're sprawled on the sofa In the living room, staring up at the white noise of the ceiling. You haven't bothered to unpause the 'lo-fi beach vibes' video you had playing on the TV. Past the sliding glass door, the rain comes down like radio static. Nothing to do outside, nothing left to do inside. Your phone doesn’t have anything better to offer, so you sling it over the edge of the couch and let it fall to the carpet. Then you look down, grab the big bag of sour gummy worms you bought, and haul it over. Might as well, right? You peel it open, grab a couple, and toss one into your mouth.

Mango-pineapple. The taste hits harder than you expect. You take a moment to savor it as it saturates your tongue. It's been a while since you last had sour candy, but you don't remember it being quite so engrossing. The next worm you try is some kind of purple flavor, and while it's just as delicious in its own way, it doesn’t captivate your senses like the mango-pineapple did.

While you eat your handful of worms, the grass outside your apartment gets swallowed by rising water. Inside, the bookshelves creep taller and taller along the walls. The coffee table lists to one side; two of its feet sink a half-inch into the carpet.

You pop the last sour gummy worm into your mouth. The pineapple tartness and cloying mango sweetness are a perfect fit. Your eyes drift shut and a smile falls across your face. How long has it been since you just enjoyed some candy?

Your hand dips back into the bag and lifts out another handful. You pinch the gummy worms between your teeth and pull them from your fingers two at a time. Your thick tongue slips out to slurp the gummy worms between your glossy pinkish lips. A bead of drool rolls down your pudgy cheek. You brush it away with your shoulder.

Okay, yes, you know you're eating more than you should. You know you should stop after this handful. But this is the first time that you've felt nice in weeks. This is a splash of color among all that gray. You can't give that up because you're worried about a little too much candy.

Hello My Name Is...

A customer at Katie's diner is messing with words, and Katie—or whatever her name is now—has got to stop it. Mature.

Katie kept her name tag pinned above the left breast of her pink button-down blouse. It was part of the outfit she had to wear: the blouse, the matching skirt, and the apron she kept her pen and order pad stuffed into. At the start of every shift, she dug her name tag out of the bowl in the back next to the shift schedule, and pinned it to her chest. It was the one part of the dumb, outdated outfit that she had no problem with.

At least, not until today.

Two other name tags were missing from the bowl when Katie clocked in. The first belonged to Liz, who was making herself busy in the late-afternoon lull by tidying up around the register. Her shift would be over in an hour and change, and Katie knew she was just counting down the minutes, because that's what she did herself when she had the eleven o'clock shift.

The other was Benny's. He was just the busboy, but he was six-foot-something and had once tackled someone who'd tried to leave without paying. Katie had never talked to him much, but she gathered he'd played football while he was in school. She was jealous of him, because he didn't have to wear pink.

As far as Katie could tell, it was a normal, slow day at the diner. She'd gone around to each booth and pulled down the blinds, so the sun wouldn't be glaring in through the windows, and had checked to make sure the table of college-aged guys didn't need anything. They were no one she knew, thankfully.

Not A Cow

Chris is not a cow, but everyone around him disagrees on that point, and so does his udder. Explicit.

Chris was not a cow.

But a droplet of milk seeped through Chris's shirt. There was a needle-sting jolt as it leaked out of him, then rolled down his chest. It left a small, off-white stain in its trail. By the time he'd lifted his hands from the keyboard and sat up in his chair, the wet patch had cooled. His nipple was stiff.

Chris was also not turning into a cow.

Which meant he had to explain why the milk he'd just leaked wasn't actually milk. Maybe he'd drooled on himself? Maybe pipe in the ceiling was leaking? Maybe he was actually just sweating?

At the very least, he could prove he wasn't lactating. Watch. With one hand, he prodded the dry side of his chest. See, he—

A small grunt died in the back of his throat. Just the warmth and pressure of his fingers through his shirt was enough to kickstart something in his chest.

His hands gripped the desk and he bit back a whine. The sting was back, and at his other nipple this time. A few drops rolled through his shirt, wobbled fatly, and then fell onto his desk. Plip-plip. It hurt, but it was the sort of pain that would be worse if he fought it. It was the sort of pain that relieved aching tightness.

He exhaled and looked down. Twin stains ran down his chest, with his swollen nipples poking against his shirt at the top of each. The wet fabric felt even rougher than when it was dry.

He needed to get home and fix this. He'd go to a hospital if he had to. He wasn't a cow, and he wasn't going to be a cow.

Hell of a Party

A Halloween party gets more enjoyable for a young cat once a demonic force starts altering reality. Explicit.

Circ had grown out of parties. Well, he didn't want to say it like that and sound like an asshole, but that was pretty much the way he felt. Parties were great when you were a kid and got presents and everyone played games. And he bet that parties were pretty fun when you were an adult and could get drunk and do all sorts of crazy stuff. But when you were a teenager, what was there to do?

He couldn't dance, so trying to would be an embarrassment. It was way too loud to have a conversation with someone. But everyone was was where it was noisy; he couldn't slip off somewhere quiet and find someone to talk to.

The music was hurting the brown cat's ears. Damn it, was he getting a headache? He'd wanted to go trick or treating, but his friends had talked him into coming to the party instead. He was pretty sure he'd be having more fun trick or treating. Only maybe half the people had even showed up in any kind of costume.