//------------------------------// // To Start // Story: Roadtrip // by enamis //------------------------------// The only reason I woke up is because my arm had gone numb from the elbow down. It wasn't the first time that'd happened, I had a bad habit of sleeping with my limbs in weird angles so waking up like this was nothing new, just another lazy beginning to a little vacation. When I cracked open my eyes, the first thing that was wrong was the fact that I was on my stomach. I could fall asleep like that, sure, but I could never actually sleep like that. The second thing was the fact that I was tiny. When you’ve been the tallest person, period, your entire life, suddenly finding yourself the size of a big dog was… concerning. Well, saying suddenly was a bit of a lie. When I had woken up yesterday, fallen out of my hammock and gone; ‘face, meet floor’ everything just spiraled out of control after that. And today, today was the day my desperate hopes of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours had been either a dream or some accidental, drug, hallucination-y, nightmare-y induced… nightmare… Basically, what I'm getting at was that I was fucked. After blinking for about a minute straight to make sure that, yep, I was indeed awake I started the tedious process of moving. My weird, wobbly legs managed to push the front of my body upward and into some kind of clumsy sitting position. Then came my back legs. Why yes, I did have more than two legs but ya’ know what? I had filled my ‘mental breakdown’ quota yesterday so today was when shit was going to get done. As unsteady as I was, I got myself into a sort of standing position atop my mattress. My light and teeny body barely even made depressions in the thing while I hobbled in a circle to try and get myself to face the door to the other room. One wobbly leg after the other, like crawling on all fours but with one’s knees bending the wrong way ‘round, I stumbled to the closed door. Reaching up towards the handle I thanked whatever twisted shithead of a god that had done this to me, that he at least let me keep my fingers. Granted they were now one fewer and really, really sharp at the tips but weird thumbs were better than no thumbs. When I managed to shimmy open the door and not ram my face into the linoleum again, my senses was assaulted by the stale stench of dust and the absolutely wonderful pungent aroma of rot. I did a little, involuntary dry heave before I slammed my palm over the top of my beak, where my nostrils were and took a second to calm down. Inching my hand off my face I got myself accustomed to the stench and squinted my eyes to get them adjusted to the low light of the next room. It was about half the size of my huge-ass bedroom with a stairwell going down to the first floor of my family’s summer home in the far left corner. The wall to my right was the one the massive balcony was attached to and the entire wall had gray curtains pulled across it, stifling what little daylight there still was streaming through the window and glass door. As I quickly stumbled my way around the door to my room that hid my mom’s bed from view a million possibilities ran through my head. An empty bed was none of them. Her bright blue comforter she always laid over her bed was gone, along with her woolen blanket leaving behind only her orthopedic pillow. My eyes darted around the room but all her other stuff was still there. Her laptop bag, her backpack with her clothes, drying tea (who on earth would steal tea?). I sighed. I wasn’t going to get anywhere just by standing around so my next course of action was to figure out what the flying fuck I was. And if I was a flying fuck because of some… interesting anatomic additions I felt on my back. In the corner facing the stars was a large oak dresser. It had been pretty big back when I had still been a meter eighty but now it seemed like a towering mountain I would have to brave to make it to the mirror up top. After a little brainstorming I pulled out the bottom two drawers and made a stair out of them. After pulling myself up to the very top of the dresser using upper body strength I didn’t knew I possessed I was met with… me… The first full look at myself after I stopped being human. Staring back at me was something straight out of my history books. A griffon. After steadying my heart and waiting for my brain to catch up with the fact that, yes, it was me looking back from the mirror and I was a goddamn mythological creature. I could finally properly inspect myself. The first thing I noticed was just how bright my eyes were. Like, even in the dim light filtering through the thick and dust-clouded curtains covering the small window to the balcony, they looked like they were glowing. I blinked a few times and realized just how dim the room was yet I could see surprisingly well even if the colors around me seemed duller than usual. I had chalked it up to the dust covering fucking everything but the more I thought about it the more I realized I had probably gained some kind of cat-like vision. Neat. What was also neat was that my eyes were bright red. Like something out of a (proper, non-sparkly) vampire movie or something, which was actually pretty cool. I would never admit it to anyone but I had always wanted red eyes, even when I was still a girl. There was just something appealing about that, and for what it was worth, this was the one change I didn’t mind. Also they were fucking humongous. Like, half my face was made of eye. I foresaw a lot of problems concerning grit in my future. Continuing downward, my entire head all the way down to my neck and over my chest had feathers. They had a very light pink tint to them and they were insanely small and fluffy but also laid very thick. Perhaps down feathers? But at the same time they seemed pretty resilient and had this sort of stiff, shell-like feel to them which was… weird. The craziest thing about this part of me was a huge triangle looking mark smack-dab in the middle over my breast. The color was a darker red and matched some of the highlights at the tips of some of my other feathers, but the triangular shape was unmistakable. Oh, and as a side note, it looked like I didn’t have visible ears but I did feel some bumps beneath the fluff so there was that. I ran my hand through the feathers on my head which were another unique brand of odd. They were longer and bigger and stiffer than the others and had colored tips along with looking like they framed my face. A couple slightly fell in front of my eyes, like my old hairstyle back when I was like thirteen or something did, but not enough to be bothersome. At the back of my head, or at least as far as I could see with only one mirror, they made it look like I had medium length hair. Absentmindedly I rubbed my weird orangey-brown claws or whatever against the side of my beak. The color was similar enough but the mechanics of my face confused me. I smiled at myself in the mirror and my beak moved into a strange smile, showing off sharp, bright white teeth at the sides but not at the front where it curved downward and into a hard, sharp point. I then made a motion of puckering my lips and my beak did… like lips… but… sharp… dafuq? Just don’t think about it. Why yes, brain I would like to see the rest of me, and not try to understand how my fucking face works! Yep… Tots’… Let’s move on shall we?! Anyway, inspecting the rest of me was simple. From the neck down I had the build of a lioness with a short, smooth dark red-brown coat instead of skin or feathers or anything like that. I wiggled my butt in the mirror a bit and beside the fact that my thighs felt like they could crush rocks it was overall lion-y enough to sate my curiosity. After some mental struggling I sighed in defeat and lifted up my tail. The thing had a little pink tuft at the end and did a pretty good job of hiding my girl-bits which seemed mostly the same so I very quickly moved on to the most interesting part of my anatomy. I had motherfucking wings. They were absolutely huge, looking to be even longer then my entire body when folded. I wiggled my shoulder blades and watched them shift around, feeling the powerful muscles underneath my skin ripple. It felt like I had another two arms except very weirdly proportion and glued to my back. The feathers were long and tough, mostly the same color as my body with reddish ends, matching my highlights. After another once-over I had gotten myself familiar enough with my new body to see what the shit was going everywhere else. In a brief moment of stupid cockiness I leaped off the dresser like a cat instead of climbing down like a normal griffon-person and oooh boy did I regret it. Ya’ see my plan was to use my inner cat-ness and my new half-cat body to pull off a stunt worthy of a full cat. When my front legs crumpled under my own weight at the end of my jump and I once more rammed my face against the linoleum I realized, I am, in fact, no goddamn cat. Fuck everything. After laying face-down on the ground in pain for some minutes I wearily unglued myself from the floor and wobbled in the direction in the staircase. Speaking of which, all I can say is fuck ‘modern’ stairs. The first floor seemed a goddamn mile away and the only way down were flimsy, disproportioned, weird, creaky-ass and steep steps that not even my oma had the guts to climb. Yay me. I spent a solid few minutes trying to think about how I was going to get down without snapping my neck and finally settled on what I dubbed the reverse-four-wheel-drive. Basically, every person in the planet has climbed up the stairs on all fours at least once in their life and if someone says they haven’t they're liars. So that’s what I did but backwards. It was pretty nerve-wracking but after a bit I was safely down on the first floor and breathed a sigh of relief. Only to remember everything here smelled like literal death. With my hand on my nostrils again I did the three-legged race into the living room, past the small fridge that seemed to be the cause of the aroma and leaped through the archway. My eyes instantly snapped to the couch-bed thing Oma slept in only for it to be just like my mom’s. Empty, nothing but untouched dust. There was this horrible, cold, crawling feeling at the very base of my neck and before I even knew it I burst out through the front door onto the wooden deck that thumped under my weight. Our vast lawn had grown out like crazy and would have probably gone way past my human-ankles. Now, however, it felt like it reached up to my elbows. “HELLO?!” I called out, looking over to the house to my right. It belonged to my uncle’s family and at this point I was willing to hug or kiss or I don’t even fucking know, literally any living being. “Hello?!” I called out again, wading through the overgrown grass and around the weed-ridden and wilted flower beds towards the gate that linked our properties. As I got closer I saw that their lawn had grown out just as much as ours and that… didn’t bode well, not at all. The slide-y-lock on the gate was real effin’ high up and the little rope tied around the top to keep my cousins moronic dog from pushing the gate open and running off through the holes under our fence didn’t help either. I rose up on my back legs and as weird as it felt it was actually pretty alright. I undid the lock and began wiggling the gate back and forth to try and loosen the rope up top. I finally succeeded and as rewards I fell back and flat on my ass. After grumbling under my breath and shaking all kinds of grass and dirt from myself I stepped into the neighboring yard. There was a very distinct stench of rotting meat in the air but it wasn’t as concentrated as our enclosed little house so I just kind of ignored it. A glance to the side, past the firewood shed and to the little gate that lead to the chicken enclosure gave me a pretty good idea on what was rotting. The strange part was that it looked like something had torn through the frail wire fence and into the enclosure but what… Before I could even register what was happening everything slowed to a crawl. I could suddenly hear every blade of grass shift under something’s weight, I felt the pants that rang through the air and the ever so faint tremble of the earth. My body sprung to the side, almost on its own as my wings splayed outwards and I hit the paved driveway just as something barreled right through the grass where I had been standing. Before I could recover, my entire field of view was obscured by something dirty white and scraggly, its hot breath washing over me. So I did the only thing I could. I screamed and kicked and trashed like a fucking maniac until I got the thing off of me and got myself up to my feet. My senses fully returned to me and I got a good look at the attacker. It was pretty small, about two fifths my size with dirty, tangled and matted fur that was stained dark red-brown around its mouth. It looked at me with its beady black little eyes and wagged its tail at me and… “BELLA!” I screeched at the top of my lungs the moment I recognized my cousin’s scraggly mutt. I threw myself around her and began feverishly petting her and rubbing her floppy ears and trying to keep her from licking my face. Somehow, she recognized me even if I barely even recognized myself, but fuck if I was gonna' question it. “Oh Bella, Bella, Bella thank god, thank god I'm not alone.” I breathed as I continued petting every single inch of her. After a while we’d both calmed down but I was still left with one horrifying question. Where did everyone go? Judging by the dried blood around the mutt’s face and the feathers strewn all across the yard and holy shit was that a carcass or a shoe? Bella was fine, albeit a bit worse for wear and bit… bony. Really, I was just glad she was alive. I couldn’t say much for anyone or anything else around here. How long had it been anyway? The grass, the dust, the rot, the death, what happened? And why was I the only one still here? I scratched Bella behind her ears and just stared off into nothing. “So… what now?” I asked no one. I cast my look from the overcast skies and across the wilderness that had reclaimed our lots and our land all the way down to the empty fields below and the pines off into the distance. “I guess I'm all alone… I mean, I might as well make the most of it, right?” With renewed vigor I set off to do… a great many things. My overall plan was simple. Get to Riga, get home, see if there's anyone still left in one of the biggest cities in the Baltics. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to actually get there. Time passed in a blur after that point but I distinctly remember leaving Bella to her own devices and heading back up to my room. There, on my laptop and my MP4, both having some serious battery conserving power, I checked the dates and they both read June 19th. I couldn’t check my phone since the battery had died over the apparent MONTH I was… sleeping…? Honestly I just rolled with it, I was a fucking griffon and waking up a month after the motherfucking Rapture was just another thing to add to the pile. Speaking of piles, I packed up my laptop and tech and essentials and my plush turtle that I’d love forever and ever, and brought it all down to the first floor. It was difficult but as long as I didn’t actually think about walking I did fine. Cleaning out the fridge was horrible, but apparently mythological creatures had a much less horrible gag reflex than old-me. I scrounged up all the food in my house and with a bucket we kept in the bathroom I headed off to my cousin’s house and raided that as well. It was just as barren and dusty and after grabbing all the food and dog-food I may or may not have stolen Tom's Xbox while I was there. Maybe, possibly… Step two was head to town. It was few kilometers out but I was a person that had walked five miles to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways, so that was all fine and dandy. Bella trailed behind me the entire way and I was a bit scared she might run off and I’d lose my only friend left in this empty world but she was surprisingly reasonable, especially since she was, ya’ know, an untrained borderline-retarded mutt. Valka and the entire trip there was just as empty as I pretty much expected. No matter how loud I yelled and sang in all two languages I knew no one answered. It was a bit disheartening but… oh well. I robbed all three shops we had, mostly canned stuff and drinks but I also took candy and chocolates and as much Sour cream and Onion Pringles as I could get my hands on and loaded all of that up in a shopping cart. I took two bags of dry dog-food kibbles and some random assorted stuff that I figured I could use and at that point I could barely move the fucker so I began pushing that heavy-ass cart uphill back home. At least Bella kept me company. By the time I made it to the front gate of our lot I was fucking dead from exhaustion. The sun had gone down two-thirds the way home and predictably, the electricity was out, so not only was it dark as shit it was also pretty fucking spoopy. I kept hearing noises and birds and all that crap. I was a bit concerned because I didn't really know what lived in this area but since we were surrounded by forests on all sides I had a couple of ideas. I dragged my haul next to my mom’s car in the little shed we used as a garage, just in case it rained and grabbed a big ol’ rawhide bone for Bella, a giant flashlight and a can of peas and a can of corn and left the rest of it. Hopefully nothing was going to eat it while I slept. As I walked up onto the deck of my home away from home and watched Bella lie down in oma’s upturned chair, gnawing on her treat, I had a sudden idea. I dashed through my moonlit yard and into my cousin’s house and with my flashlight shoved down my goddamn throat (at least that’s how it felt) rummaged through every pocket, checked every countertop and flipped every cushion until I finally found a key to one of the two cars sitting just outside. I nearly tumbled down the stairs on my way out to their patio and rushed to the cars. It wasn’t the first one but the second one’s doors opened with a click that was like music to my ears. I threw myself into the driver’s seat and rammed the damned key into the ignition. I felt like a complete and utter moron for not thinking of this before and I could have very well pissed myself in excitement as I turned the key. Only for the car to give a few weak sputters and stay dead. And just like that the entire day’s exhaustions rushed to meet me in one giant explosion of misery and I slammed my head against the steering wheel. Hard. Again. Again. Again. Again. I didn’t even realized the fluid dripping onto my hands were my tears until I felt Bella lick them away. The dumb dog pushed into the car with me and wrapped her warm body against me and just stayed there. If anything, it was just an invitation to continue bawling. And so I did. I cried for my Mom and Oma. I cried for my cousin and his sister and his family, even if we never really got along. I cried for the librarian that always smiled at me when I used their free Wi-Fi. I cried for my other cousin, the teacher and her mother. I cried for the city I that held my childhood and I cried for all that once lived here. And I cried for myself. I cried for the empty world I was left in. And I cried myself to sleep in a dead car that had been the last straw. o.O.o