Steve rolled himself into the kitchen. He ignored the steaming, browned skin on the roasted anthro chicken girl in the far corner who, despite her obvious predicament, seemed to not only be animate but also struggling to lay a massive egg.
Opening the fridge, Steve reached through a spine covered dragon egg, grabbed a cartoon with an orange on it, then drank down the sweet, cool juice. Still wanting some caffeine, Steve grabbed a bottle of soda – despite knowing full well just how much orange juice he had already drank as well as how limited his bladder capacity was, before rolling back out of the kitchen.
Once back at his computer, Steve turned on the TV next to it and scrolled through the channels until he came to the local news. He’d assumed that a building full of laboring anthro girls would be the kind of thing that would be the top story, but the anchor was just droning on about a local sports team.
Steve couldn’t read the ticker scroll to see if the story was mentioned there, so he was forced to sit and watch as the anchors talked about all sorts of trivialities, until one of them finally mentioned the forest near his apartment.
“In other news, a tanker spilled toxic chemicals on the highway earlier today, closing down all access near the local community center. We take you now to our reporter on the scene.”
Steve continued watching as the reporter questioned an “EPA scientist” who was standing in front of some FEMA-style vans. The “scientist” said that the spill had been contained and there was nothing to worry about, but that access was going to be restricted to the area for the foreseeable future.
Nothing that the scientist or reporter talked about indicated that this was a major story, much less than that they had found the group of men turned mothers that Steve had made earlier. Another glance at the vans that were blocking access to the road caused Steve to flashback to a vision he’d had when he’d been a rabbit – the vision of ‘himself’ giving birth in the back of a FEMA van.
He realized that the government was covering up what had happened, and that the people from last night were almost certainly finding themselves in that exact situation. Steve shuddered, though he realized it was more out of the realization of just how close he’d come to finding himself trapped in the same fate, rather than out of concern for the birthing anthros he’d created.
Turning the TV off, Steve decided to listen to some music. That was a challenge, since his inability to read prevented him from searching for music, but he remembered that he had a few tabs with music videos already loaded. Opening one of them up, Steve hit play to the sound of:
“Better hear what you got to say because you won’t hear it again…”
Oh… no…
“I am the truth!”
Of all the songs he could have clicked…
“Hey you *baby*…” Steve cringed as the baby inside of him squirmed.
“…you don’t know how bad its going to get.” Steve gulped.
“If you think shit sucks now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Because it doesn’t get better – unless you’re pretty. It doesn’t get better – unless you’ve got money. It doesn’t get better, so just get up. It never gets better…”
Steve loved MDI, and he’d listened to this song on repeat for days on end before. But now instead of filling him with a sense of energy and determination, it served only to fill him with dread as the song drove home a salient point:
“IT”
“GETS”
“WORSE”