The room flooded with light as the ring began to burn the shimmering white metal being melted into a furnace. Michael glanced away as his retinas began to burn from the ring’s brilliance, only for his attention to be drawn back to it by a loud hiss, followed by a cloud of crimson smoke bellowing out of the ring’s engraving.
The smoke began to swirl around Michael, and he felt a strong suction inside the center of his head. Invisible hands grabbed something inside of his brain and began tugging and pulling on his very essence, slowly dragging it out through his nose.
Then there was a sudden release as white smoke began pouring out of his nostrils, all while the crimson smoke that was swirling around him forced its way into his mouth and up through the back of his throat.
The feeling of the white smoke leaving his body as the crimson smoke replaced it was… emasculating, for lack of a better word. It felt like all of his strength was being drained and being replaced with something lesser and weaker. Something not quite human. Something…
Michael blinked and found himself staring at Freddie, who was still just standing there looking out from the kitchen. There was no smoke in the room, and the ring on his finger looked the same as it did before he’d read the inscription. He quickly glanced over his body but everything was still there, just as normal and human as before.
“So?” Freddie asked, “anything happen?”
“You didn’t see that?” Michael replied.
“See what?”
“The light and the smoke? You didn’t see any of that?”
“Dude stop shitting me, I told you magic isn’t real, that place is just a cheap antique shop.”
Michael just sat there, bewildered. Had Freddie really not seen everything that has just transpired? It had felt so read to Michael and yet, it didn’t make sense. Had the ring been soaked in LSD?
Michael just sat there, staring off into infinity, as Freddie ordered some pizza and put on the TV. The rest of the evening passed with Michael on autopilot while Freddie ate and joked, but whatever had happened with the ring was just too much for Michael to process at the moment.
Eventually the time came for Michael to go back to his own house, but as he got up off the couch Freddie asked, “you ok man? You’ve been given the hundred yard stare all night.”
“Ya,” Michael said in a monotonous voice, “I just… you’re sure you didn’t see anything earlier?”
“Dude I told you to stop screwing with me. That ring’s a joke don’t worry about it.”
“Ya I uh, you’re right. I think I just need some sleep,” Michael replied as he walked out the door.
The walk to his house next door was brief and Michael was dog tired. Opening the door, he went straight to the bathroom. He peed, flushed the toilet, gargled some mouthwash, then looked at himself in the mirror.
He could feel the magic swirling around inside of his skull. It told him that something inside of him had changed and that he was no longer a human. And yet, staring back at him in the mirror was the same brown haired 30 something human that he’d seen in the mirror every other time he’d looked at it. Perhaps the only thing that seemed off was the slightest hint of an unusual smell.
What wafted through Michael’s nose wasn’t quite the smell of a skunk, nor was it the smell of a wet dog either. Instead, it was a sort of mixture of the two that just bordered on being offensive without being so. And although Michael had never smelled anything like it before, he somehow got the sense that it belonged to a fox.
Michael took another deep breath and inhaled more of the faint smell. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Was this another hallucination? The scent was so transient that he might not have even noticed it but for its unique, skunky qualities. Even still, there wasn’t enough of it for him to be able to get a sense of where it was coming from or if it was even there at all.
Opening his mouth, Michael let out a loud yawn. He hadn’t done much today and yet exhaustion was still creeping in. Writing the smell off as coming from an animal that had died in the bushes outside, Michael took his clothes off and jumped in bed.
Pressing his head into the pillow and closing his eyes, Michael smelled the scent return. It travelled up into his nose, through his skull, and implanted a single thought in his brain: female fox. Then blackness overtook him.