Max’s jaw dropped when he looked in the mirror and didn’t see his usual handsome, adult self, but instead saw a little, grey-furred, humanoid rat child staring back at him in nothing but a pair of cartoon-character briefs. The only remnant of the man he had been before was the tuft of bright, medium-length blond hair on top of his head. Max’s little rat snout twitched nervously, making his new whiskers tremble, while his long, skinny tail was twisting all around.
“W-w-what the hell is going on here!?” Max squeaked out in his boyish voice as he looked all around for answers. All of the recording equipment he had painstakingly set up the night before was gone, his expensive smartphone replaced by a cheap prepaid (no reception, naturally), and the clothes he’d picked out for the weekend were gone, replaced by a colorful camper outfit, sized for a ten-year old boy and tailored for a sleek, skinny rodent body.
“Well, at least they got my size right,” Max muttered to himself, then he frowned. “Wait, what’s that s’posed ‘ta mean… I’m not ten, am I…?”
Max wracked his brain, trying to put a number to how old he had been before… He hadn’t been old enough to be a daddy yet, but he was older than a school kid, right? So, he must have been about… 15? 15 seemed pretty old to his quickly regressing mind, so he did some math in his head and decided that he must have lost only 5 years overnight, instead of the 10 years that he had actually lost.
A pounding on the door broke him out of his thoughts, and the voice of another young boy outside said, “Max! It’s time for breakfast! We gotta get movin’ or the counselor’s gonna get mad!”
Max let out an unintentional squeak in surprise, then said, “O-okay! I’ll be right there!” before throwing on his camper outfit, easily threading his tail through the hole in the shorts and tying up the neckerchief like a pro without even realizing it. Max peeked out the door and was greeted with the sight of another little kid, a grinning gray wolf boy with nicely-combed brown hair.
“Can you believe this place!? It’s like magic!” the wolf boy excitedly, his sleek tail wiggling around behind him. “Oh, I forgot to say, my name’s Myles! I’m… 11? I think so at least! It’s hard to keep it all straight, y’know?” Myles giggled excitedly as he babbled happily.
“Umm… I know what you mean, I guess…” Max said, unsure of what the hell was going on as they walked into the main area of the cabin, where the rest of the bunk beds were set up and all kinds of critter kids, about the same age as him and Myles, were running around in a scene of utter chaos. A golden retriever boy had grabbed a tanuki’s shorts and was playing keep-away with them, a squirrel kid was hopping back and forth between the top bunks, and in the middle of it all a chubby bear boy was still snoozing in his bunk like a log.
“How come rat-boy gets his own room, huh?” he heard one of the little critters whispering to his friend as they got dressed for the day.
“I dunno, ‘cause he’s some kinda star or something… Must think he’s too good for the rest of us,” the other boy whispered back, making Max feel a mix of annoyance and sadness at being talked about behind his back.
Putting what the other boys had said behind him, Max rubbed his eyes, trying to convince himself this was all just a weird dream. He gave his tail a sharp tug to check if he was still dreaming, but decided that somehow this must all be real. If anything, his memories of being a human were starting to feel more like a dream as a new reality started to assert itself on him. As strange as this all was, Max couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of excitement at the weird situation he was finding himself in, and in the back of his head he was wondering where it all might lead, as the door opened up and the camp counselor came inside…