Whenever Tim could hear a sharp clicking sound from out in the hallway, approaching his apartment door, he knew what that meant. He turned around on his trunk just in time to watch the door open and one of the two people he had entrusted with his keys step inside. The sound stopped as soon as Callie was past the threshold - her hooves, which had made wearing shoes both impossible and unnecessary for her, were muffled as they sank into the carpet.
Tim's attention quickly focused not on Callie's feet, but on her face. And not on the fact that she had the face of a pig - he'd had plenty of time to get used to that sight by now. As she lugged a bag of fertilizer into the room, the look on her face reminded him right away of her shell-shocked expression at the Halloween party, in those dark couple of hours where it seemed that people's changes were truly going to last for the rest of their lives if they'd taken their clothes off. In fact, right now, she looked even more troubled than she had on that fateful night. Her eyes were red and puffy, and Tim thought he could see her trembling a little as she walked into the room.
"Hey, Callie...", Tim hesitantly called out as she approached. He knew she probably wasn't going to want to answer this question, but... "Everything alright?"
"Yeah," Callie said, quickly and unconvincingly. "Everything's fine."
He was going to leave it at that - just because he objectively had gotten a rawer deal from this magic stuff, he wasn't going to act like he was the only one taking it hard. He didn't want or need to pry into how she was really feeling. But as she turned to face Tim, something caught his eye, a flash of white sticking out in between her black tank top and her bright pink skin. It looked like a square of gauze that was held in place there...
"Is that...", he started, but trailed off when he spotted the bits of red that had seeped through the middle of the white fabric. "Oh my god, are you hurt?!"
"No, it's nothing, it's just..." Callie started to say, but then stopped herself, her eyes wet. "I guess I need to explain. I'm not gonna be able to keep this from you..."
She sat down on a nearby couch, putting her face in her trotter-like hands. Tim tried to drag himself a little bit closer to where she sat, hopping forward in his pot, without making too much distracting noise.
"It's about Keith," she eventually said, once she'd caught her breath with a few plaintive, irrepressible snorts. "You remember him, right? The tiger guy? Well, ever since the party, we've been just as, you know, active in the bedroom as ever. I thought, hey, at least I don't need to worry about birth control for a while, right? And now he has this sort of wild... energy to him that just- I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm telling you this. The point is, last night, we were in bed together. And then... oh, god..."
By now, the words were clearly spilling out faster than Callie could think about them. She couldn't hold herself back from telling the whole story at this point. "I noticed a while ago that he was looking at me sort of strangely," she said. "I mean, it's not the first time I've had a guy stare at me like I was a piece of meat, but... this was really different. Whenever we made eye contact, I was just instantly afraid. And I told myself, like, you know he's not going to hurt you, right? I would've never gone out with him in the first place if I thought he was capable of that. I said, he's the same person that he was before, just with a lot of fur all over... and way sharper teeth... and giant claws... and oh god, that tongue..."
"Whenever we were in bed together, he would just start licking me. I thought, I guess that's just how he wants to show affection now, but it hurt. So long, and so rough... with those spines that just dig into your skin. And he would always go straight for these..." Callie grabbed at her stomach, her two-fingered hands pulling at rolls of fat that went just a bit beyond your typical love handles. "I mean, I was insecure enough about my change giving me these extra pounds... I've been trying to work them off, but I keep sweating like- never mind."
"But then, last night... I was just lying there and taking it, and hating the feeling of that tongue all over me, when I feel this sharp pain right here..." She gently tapped at the spot covered by the bandage, which was just above her fattened breasts. "I open my eyes and look down and I see... blood. And Keith's fangs were all covered in it, sticking right into my skin. I thought, oh my god, he's not trying to make love like a tiger does. He's trying to get a taste of me! I looked into his big yellow eyes... he seemed crazed... and I just lost it. I hit him as hard as I could with one of these..." She mimicked a solid right hook, wiggling the hard brown slabs of keratin that had replaced her fingers as she did. "And I know how hard these things can be, 'cause I've accidentally hit myself in the face enough times to know the feeling."
"Oh my god," Tim said. It was all he could think to say.
"He swore up and down that it was just an accident, that his tongue just slipped," she went on. "But I just couldn't get myself to trust him again. The look in his eyes, and the smell of the heat on him... it just told me that he was really thinking of something darker. So I got up and grabbed my purse, and I brought out the pepper spray, and I said, get away from me! Don't come back in this apartment ever again!"
"Wait," Tim interjected, "doesn't Keith live with you?"
"Yeah," said Callie, "I told him he had one hour to pack up his things and go. And he went... But I keep second-guessing myself. Was I overreacting? I don't know, I just couldn't be around him any longer. He could just be minding his own business and it would still scare the shit out of me. If I hadn't kicked him out, I was gonna be the one who was running away."
Tim was firmly on Callie's side here, morally speaking, but he couldn't help wondering... "Where's he gonna go now? Do you know?"
Callie sighed. "I think he's thinking about moving to one of those furry colonies they're setting up out west. You know, for the types who actually like what they've been stuck with and want to stay that way. A few days ago, he was trying to convince me that we should move to this one in Nevada. I said absolutely not, I'm not going anywhere and I'm sure as shit not staying like this any longer than I have to."
"He wants to stay that way, though?" Tim asked.
"I've never heard him give a word of complaint about being a tiger," she replied. "He thinks it's the coolest thing. He feels so powerful, he said to me. I guess maybe if I'd gone for the matching face paint, I'd feel the way he does. But no, I just had to go for the one I thought was funny-looking..."
Callie's trembling voice, which was leading this whole conversation, had been through the entire rollercoaster of emotions as she told her story, from depressed to traumatized to defiant. Now she just sat quietly, seemingly lost in thought. Tim watched her chest rise and fall with shuddering breaths, her floppy ears twitching back and forth atop her head. He wanted to give her a reassuring hug, but he knew that blanketing her in a carpet of sharp pine needles wasn't likely to calm her nerves. And any words that came to him seemed just as unhelpful. He could only bring himself to lend a sympathetic ear (well, he no longer had any actual ears, but his sense of hearing was unaffected by the change).
The silence was only broken when Callie looked up from her lap and addressed Tim directly. "I know you haven't been able to leave here since Halloween," she said slowly, "but do you have any idea what it's like to go out and be around strangers when you've been... changed?"
The dumbfounded look on his face told her that he didn't.
"It's hard," she said. "Really hard. The way that people look at you - or go out of their way to avoid looking at you... It's not just that you make people uncomfortable just by being around them... But, like, some of them actually seem to hate you for reminding them that this isn't the normal world anymore. The anger on people's faces, the disgust... and all of it for what? Because they just want to go back to what's familiar? It's like, yeah, so do I!"
"But for me, it's been even worse. I could at least expect some solidarity from other folks that've been changed, but a lot of them are predators now. I saw this huge, hulking wolf-man on the sidewalk the other day, and he seemed totally friendly... But I was just so scared, I had to cross the street to get away from him. And as soon as I got to the other curb, I thought, what's wrong with me? Am I part of the problem, too? But then, how am I supposed to just get along with someone who could practically eat me in one bite? And when I know their instincts are screaming at them just as loudly as mine are?"
"I'm sorry," Callie said, realizing just how much more she had let out than she had meant to. "I know I shouldn't be venting all of this on you, and I know you've got it way worse than I do. I'm sure you'd gladly take my place if you could. But if you don't know what it's like out there... then maybe in some tiny way, you can consider yourself lucky. Now, what did I come in here for?"
She looked back at the bag of fertilizer she'd carried in with her.
"Oh, right! This stuff says it's full of nutrients for better plant health. I know you don't need to eat anymore, but maybe this will give you more energy..."