3 In Which The Importance Of Booster Seats Is Discovered
My ill gotten prize jingled in my claws as I made my way across the cul-de-sac to my house. My stomach roiled inside me, I must have been hungry by now, but I was just too conflicted to eat. I didn’t deserve it.
I hoisted myself over the chair I propped the front door with and hopped back down inside my house. The three petrol cans still laid on the front lawn outside. I didn’t worry, though. It’s not like there was anyone around to break in or steal them and even if there were, they’d have the entire town to play around in. There would be no sense in bothering me at all.
As I ascended up the stairs to my room, a task that would normally take a moment now took upwards of a minute, I heard something familiar.
I heard an inquisitive meow.
And sure enough, when I swiveled my head around, she was sitting there, staring up at me with wide eyes. A little on the elderly side now, so her black and white coat was patched with grey and her face had the grizzled countenance of all elder felines, but sure enough, that was Beth.
Beth used to belong to the previous occupants of the Bad House. Who, co-incidentally, were also addicts. Addicts that kept cats locked up inside their house, that didn’t feed them and didn’t spay or neuter them. Eventually they “moved” (got evicted) and in the confusion, a single one of their feline prisoners saw her chance. Out the door and over the fence, we found her in our yard a day after they left. The couple did come back asking after her, but we thought it best for everyone involved if we took care of her instead.
Me and Beth had a special relationship. You ever get those cats that are absolute bastards to everyone they know? The sort of cat that refuses to come when you call and goes missing for days on end? You’ll find that cats like that bond with a single person and smother them in all their love. I was Beth’s chosen. Every time she’d hear my car pull up, she’d be waiting right outside our door for me, purring like a motorcycle.
She stared at me with interest, but her wide eyes and flat ears gave her fear away.
“...hello there, Missy.” I cooed out softly, trying to emulate how I would normally talk to her. “Missy” was my pet name for her, since she always held herself with a noble air, even with her extra inbred toes. Although now come to think of it, that just made her even more like the nobility.
She didn’t flinch away, but she let out another confused meow. Louder this time. She was worried. Scared.
I began to slowly shuffle myself back down the stairs, taking care not to make any sudden movements. As far as I knew, Beth was the only family I had left and I didn’t want to send her running.
Once I had reached the bottom of the stairs, Beth had shrunk in on herself like a fuzzy turtle and further away from me. I approached as nonthreatening as possible and slowly held out my hand. She’d be able to tell who I was, surely?
A claw batted my hand away, her nails skittering across my scales sounding all the world like someone trying to strike a match. As I pulled my hand back in shock, she hissed at me and bolted out of the door. There was a very faint scratch across the back of my hand, but I didn’t feel a thing. I sat on the stair and stared for a good long while. She never returned.
“...I guess you don’t recognize me after all.” I eventually said to nobody in particular, still staring at the tiny scratch on my mailed hand.
A while later, I shook my head vigorously. That was enough self pity for the time being. Keep moving forward. If you can’t run, you walk. If you can’t walk, you crawl. And when you can’t do that…
It was time to load up the Rolls. The leather satchel full of drill bits, my laptop bag, the petrol cans and the tube. They were all the essentials. They sat very neatly in the back of the car, leaving a lot of room. I didn’t have any clothes that fit, there was plenty of food around so I didn’t need any of those. My mind dimly said “camping cooker”, but there were plenty of opportunities to acquire one. I cast my mind around and thought about what to bring.
There were books, but books could be found anywhere too. If I was that hard up for them, I could break into a Barnes and Noble in the states and take whatever I wanted. Games were useless, and were all on Steam anyway...
As I cast my eyes around my room, they eventually fell on my small shelf of Metal Gear Solid memorabilia. Posters from the original advertising runs and merchandising. Action figures and the like, still in their packages. I packed them all neatly and carefully off the shelf. They were rare. I wouldn’t find those in the USA easily. Mine.
And now I thought about it, there was my complete collection of Discworld books, all signed by the author himself. They would just HAVE to come as well, so that was another box. Mine.
And my complete Abnett run of Guardians of the Galaxy, trade paperbacks too, not an anthology collection… Mine.
Okay. So three small boxes of collectibles along with my valuable survival gear.
...and my yellow chocobo plush. Neon had the plush's partner, so it’d be wrong not to bring that too. And if I brought that, I’d have to bring McCloud, my tiny fox plush I’d had since I was five. Also Mine.
Right. Three small boxes of collectibles, my satchel, my laptop bag, three gas cans, a length of tubing and two adorable plushies. The essentials.
Oh, and a crowbar from the utility closet. Because crowbars are always useful things to have.
Right, there we go. Car as packed as it’s going to get without me taking my entire bedroom with me. It was time to hop into the driver’s seat and see if there were going to be any other problems, mirrors to adjust and so on. I very carefully opened the door, making extra sure that my big slicey claw hands didn’t scratch the paint, and hoisted myself inside.
There were… several problems. Feet, unable to touch the floor. Problem right here. Head, did not even crest the steering wheel. Problem right there. Arms, too small to grip the wheel or the gear stick. Problem right… everywhere.
I sighed, and bopped my head on the wheel, the horn beeped chirpily and didn’t reflect my mood in the slightest. Stupid horn. I was right, some adjustments were going to be needed.
I hate it when I’m right.
Okay, the most obvious thing was a booster seat. If I’m child sized, I’m going to need a child size seat. My feet can’t reach the pedals, even without the seat. That’s going to require… platform shoes? Coffee cans?
As for my arms, that one was easy. I could use my crowbar to shift gears…. or I COULD look for an automatic.
Nope. I’d decided on the Rolls and I was sticking to it. Gotta be decisive in the rapture!
Out of the car I hopped. It was around 5pm, still plenty of daylight for the summer. That was enough for one last journey outside, right? There was a supermarket just a little further past Curries, that was bound to have one.
Once more unto the breach.
A pair of bright green eyes stared at me from the top of the shed as I stepped outside yet again. Beth was watching, and hid as soon as I turned to look at her. I was hoping that she’d come around to me before I had to leave, and I vaguely thought about bringing her with me. I mean, we had an old cat-carrier in the shed. If I could get her to trust me, I could.
It was worth a shot. No sense in losing more family.
The sun was still pretty high in the sky, as befitting a hot sunny day in the UK. I figured I had a solid 4 hours of sunlight left as I scurried across the intersection by B&Q and Curries. As I turned the corner of Curries I could see the Sainsbury's supermarket straight ahead, it's empty car park stretched in front of it like the courtyard of Buckingham Palace. Whatever happened must have happened fairly early in the morning if there were no cars around. As I got a better look, I could see the staff car park still had a few cars parked up. Morning Shift. Which also means that some people were AWAKE for the doom of mankind. The thought sent shivers up my spines.
The main entrance was locked up tight. I vaguely thought about finding the trade entrance around the back, where the trucks would unload. It would have been far too much effort for next to no reason. It was time to get into the spirit of the apocalypse!
I hefted my crowbar in my tiny hands. Despite it being almost the size of a baseball bat in my claws, I still had enough strength in my minute frame to swing it decently. I took a few practice swings, adopting a batter's stance and feeling the air whistle past as I swung. Satisfied, I approached the glass door.
"Batter u-!" I began, before hesitating. The crowbar wavered in my arms.
I was being an idiot again. Crowbars are DESIGNED to open doors, not smash them open. I lowered the tool and flipped it over, jamming the staked end into the doorjamb and applying torque. Despite being as strong as I used to be, I didn’t have a lot of body weight. I tried again, digging my sharp toe-claws into the tarmac, where they stuck and provided grip.
I heaved again and the doors gave way quite suddenly, sliding into the open position.
And sending me, naturally, sprawling onto my ass.
“Hrmn. I worked smarter instead of harder, and I’m still getting shat on….” I grumbled as I picked myself up. Oh well. The door was open, there was no horrid mess of glass to worry about and the alarm was blaring, which threatened to make my ear holes bleed, but was not a huge issue at the moment.
I stepped into the supermarket, scratching one foot with the other to try and scrape off the tarmac that had inevitably glued itself to my feet. Seeing the place so empty was… eerie. Like I was in some sort of dream. A nightmare, where I was in a place I wasn’t supposed to be in. It was unsettling, but in a different way than B&Q’s huge, dark, corridor-like isles.
I knew Sainsbury’s well enough and before long, I found myself in the child-care department. Half baked thoughts flipped past idly in my head, wondering if any of the toddler clothes would fit me. I seemed to be warm enough in just my scales and, rather unsettlingly, there really wasn’t anything to cover up. I dimly remembered reptiles having concealed uhm… reproductive organs and assumed this was the same case here. At the very least, this assumption stopped me from having yet another thing to freak out about.
I gnawed on my drill bit thoughtfully, this thing had really done the trick in calming me down. Break the world down into problems, then break those down into smaller problems until you can manage them. Have a familiar action you can do to calm yourself. Advice I had learned a long time ago to combat my anxious nature. I dabbled with pen-twirling, but it made me more anxious when I would inevitably klutz it up and send the pen skittering across the room. I tried whistling, but my mother detested whistling and let everyone in a ten mile radius know if she heard any. Having an oral fixation, something to bite, was something I'd had since I was a child. I was the kid in high school that would destroy pens with their constant chewing. Gum worked too, but was too expensive to use as often as I needed to. So toothpicks were the obvious choice.
Toys, baby powder, feeding chairs… aha. Booster seats. Okay.
I dragged one of the less colorful and childish seats down from the shelf it was on, and flinched as it rather clumsily clattered onto the tiled floor.
A thought occurred. I had trouble carrying a few petrol cans home. The box was bigger and more awkward to carry then all of them combined.
Problem right here.
Albeit a problem easily solved with a shopping trolley liberated from the car park outside. It was a bit of a hassle lifting the damn box into the trolley, but it was a lot easier to push the trolley then drag the box behind me. As I pushed the trolley out, I looked around at all the food, seeing if any struck my fancy. None of them did, until I passed the bakery. The morning shift apparently had enough time to get the first lot of baking done that morning, so the acrid scent of charcoal lead me to it. I slipped myself behind the counter and checked the small work space behind it.
There was some raw dough prepped to go into the oven, which had gone hard and gross due to not being touched for the majority of the day. Inside the oven itself, there was the scent of carbon. I flipped the emergency “off” switch and let the oven cool down, while nobody would be using this place again, the last thing I wanted was to see a part of my hometown get burned down by me leaving an oven on full blast.
I helped myself to a couple of steak pies that had been left on a hotplate ready for display, suddenly being hit full force by the amazing power of hunger. At least my taste in food still seemed to be the same, I thought as I brushed the gravy stains from my mouth.
I could still smell the carbonized bread from the oven. It didn’t smell that bad, to be honest. I’d often burn my bacon just a little bit so the fatty edges would get carbonized, it added a bit of extra crispiness to it, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I’d never eat plain charcoal all by itself.
That was just weird.
My hunger sated, I pushed my cart towards the exit. Past the alcohol aisle. Bottles in all shapes and sizes looked at me, with a hundred labels and a hundred colors.
So much free booze… tempting. Very tempting…. At the very end of the aisle, I had to give in. I left my shopping trolley at one end and paced back up, looking in awe. I could have anything I wanted, without paying. After all, it’d be criminal to leave all this to never be drank again. It’s not like I’d take much either. On one hand was ales, beers and ciders. I cleared out that isles stock of Fursty Ferret ale, it being my favourite and knowing I’d not acquire again. A solid twenty five bottles sat in my shopping trolley now. I’d have to make a note to load up on more when I reached the airport. I wouldn’t get them in the US.
But as I was leaving, a label caught my eye at the top of the whiskey shelf. Snowdonia Single Malt. My father was given a bottle of it for his fortieth birthday about ten years ago. I was fourteen. He wasn’t much for whiskey, and so it sat untouched in our liquor cabinet. He flat out said I could have it when I expressed interest. It was the first time I was trusted with my own bottle of alcohol. My father realized I was sensible enough not to do anything stupid. I didn’t have many fond moments with my father, but we were both mutual sufferers of the matriarch: my mother, his wife. She cared for us in her own bizarre way. She kept forcing us to spend time together, said that I’d “miss us when we’re dead”. A sneaking realization dawned upon me.
I kinda did.
I was churning through so many emotions right now my anxiety riddled brain had fully processed everything, that I had lost my family, my parents, for good. Then it stowed away the appropriate emotional response for when I had the luxury to worry about the things I couldn’t control. It was a coping mechanism.
And in a small way, that made me feel better, knowing that I did feel some sense of loss for my family. It meant I wasn’t a selfish, heartless bastard. I just needed to sort out every other problem first before I could grieve. I could live with that.
So in the honor of my father's memory, I began scaling the spirit shelves. This naturally resulted in the odd bottle of vodka and gin tipping over and smashing on the floor, but who cares? I highly doubted glass would slice up my feet anymore. My tiny frame was incredibly cumbersome, but surprisingly enough, my tail helped act as a counter-balance. Which upon reflection, is pretty much what tails are for.
I clawed my way to the top shelf and liberated a couple of the treasured bottles. Even better, with a bit of coaxing and with some difficulty, I was able to grip them both fairly firmly with my tail, the scales snagging the lids of the bottles. It didn’t seem to be built to be that limber, and it hurt like the dickens having to flex those new muscles that hard. My feet crunched when they touched the ground again, the tinkling of broken glass echoing in the now silent supermarket (now the burglar alarm on the main door had finally stopped). It was a blessing my feet were all claws and scales now, because if I was a human stepping barefoot on broken glass covered in incredibly strong alcohol, I would be in for a very unpleasant afternoon and a trip to the ER. Except there was no ER anymore. I was very lucky indeed.
I placed one of the bottles in the trolley and turned the other around in my hands. The taste held a special meaning to me. I'd often associated it with my finally becoming an adult at the ripe old age of fourteen. It was probably going to be one of the last comforts of home I'd ever get and it had been one HELL of a long day. Heck, it’s not like I was planning on leaving until tomorrow and I knew how much I could stomach. I knew my limits.
The cap came off easily enough, making a satisfying “thunk” noise as the cork popped out of the bottle. The familiar aroma wafted into my nostrils like an old and treasured friend that had stopped by for a cup of tea and a chat. It was relaxing, any tension my anxiety had built up faded away quite quickly. I could never describe the scent of alcohol. I knew the smells I preferred were considered “hoppy” and “malty” but I couldn’t tell you the difference between the two. The good whiskey smelt like good whiskey. What do you want from me? I’m not a frickin’ critic here.
I tipped the booze back and took a hearty sip, coughing a little. The stuff was a lot stronger than I remembered, or maybe it was my new taste buds? I used to liken it to drinking fire, but this had a lot more of a burn to it than I remembered.
Acid reflux hit my throat to greet the old friend. It seemed like it wasn’t the reunion I was hoping for. A squabble had broken out in my throat.
I hiccuped.
A foot of flame erupted from my mouth.
I dropped the bottle in shock, definitely more of a burn than I recalled, hah!
Hah….
OHFUCKINGCHRISTIJUSTSPATOUTFUCKINGFIRE
This newfound sledgehammer of anxiety churned my stomach even more, causing even more hiccups. More gouts of flame erupted from my mouth. Clamping my claws over my snout stifled one, until the next hiccup sent a stream shooting out of my nostrils...
Right onto the alcohol soaked floor. Of the spirits section of the alcohol aisle.
The alcohol soaked floor I was currently standing in the middle of.
I’d say I was paralyzed with fear, but the hiccups kind of detracted from the moment.
There was a rushing “fwump” and then the floor began dancing red and orange.
....P-problem right here!
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Oh YES! Wonderful chapter! I'll have to have a minute of silence for the single malt though. At least it went in style, Welsh whisky burned by a Welsh Dragon. Plus cats. Cats always improve every story.
This keeps getting better and better, deliver another chapter like this and your story is going from tracking to favourite ;)
AAAAHH!!! WANT!
Can't have a proper send off without a bonfire, I suppose.
6450326 I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing then! AND NO. MY BOOKS. MINE. *hiss*
I'm debating sending White off to get the only existing copy of The Shepards Crown.
6451360 Please do go on, yes.
Oh, and you may want to edit your story description:
6567446 it's welsh, my friend! This IS set in Wales, after all. Welsh is the oldest living form of Celtic dialect, and shares several similarities with Gaelic.
Fun story with nice storytelling. But coming from Starscribe's stories both the part of being a dragon and having four transformed humans who knew each other meeting the day after the Event bothers me.
6901430
What bothers you so much about a dragon? White's a tiny little thing who's going to take many, many, many years to mature and be of any use. I could understand if they started off as a giant, walking, armored arsenal, but White is a tiny, neurotic, nervous wreck.
As for your other concern, the internet is a very big place. Or you can say "destiny" or "magic" or whatever suits you, though I personally subscribe to "co-incidence". It certainly makes for a more interesting plot than yet another "Lone , angsty, wandering drifter" story.
6918695 On the dragon part was because the restrictions Starscribe places beforehand, but since he already approved your story that argumant doesn't hold water anymore, does it?
On the second part, I know the Internet is a big place. And maybe I didn't place it myself, but it's fine for a handful of people to meet in the internet the day after the Event: the main problem is that the quartet already knew each other before he Event, to the point one was the protagonist's boyfriend. That wasn't fate, or "co-incidence" (sic). That's just plain bad writing. You could perfecctly have given your protagonist motives while presenting him other people to have the same plot without the contrivance.
The worst part is that I like Daniel's reactions later, how animals are now reacting to him, and how hoarding is affecting his mind, how many his "essentials" are for traveling.
6921973 So you're willing to let an issue with the premise soil your view of the whole story? (also, not sure where you got "Daniel" from)
In regards to the Dragon non-issue, yes. Star approved the story and has White show up in the main story.
And since this story is part of the wider PaP universe, there could very well be some external force at play. It's noted that people who remain after the event are those who can handle the change and have some role to play. A group of people that knew each other beforehand still fit both of those criteria.
The fact of the matter is this is the story I wanted to tell, and part of the reason why is because it ties heavily into the stories my friends are telling. Though I'll take it as high praise that this is the only issue you have with it.
Wait... A Homestuck fan, and a Discworld fan as well? Omg, you're cool in my books.
YES, HE IS A RATHER INTERESTING PERSON...
Oh, hey there, Death, nice to meet you... *Faints*
OH, DEAR. NOT THIS AGAIN...
I relate to this dragon