Alex Skunk
Suddenly, I was awake again. Properly, I mean; I had been walking for a while, daydreaming and paying very little attention to anything. I was having trouble with key details of why I was here, but the end result was the same; I was in the forest.
Oh, it was green and brown in ways you'd never seen. In photos and in the world, you could look at a tree and see a million different shades of brown, with leaves a billion different shades of green and yellow. Those necessary imperfections, they made it all the more real. But here, the colours were perfect, individual shades. I had walked straight into a very simple painting.
I must have walked all the way here, suggested my aching feet. The ground felt soft and squishy, and yet I wasn't dirty; there were no insects, and the forest itself barely made a sound.
The sky too, it was a blue with immobile, puffy clouds. How was I here again? I'd never been here before, and there was nothing familiar about this place. Heck, there was nothing natural about it either. I began to back away, confused and unsure, though looking behind me there was nowhere particularly safe to back away to, either. Behind me was all just the same.
The Uncanny Valley, I thought. Well, in absence of a map, that would do as a name.
Names. Facts. Details. I was Alex; seventeen, male, dreamer, high school student. I had exactly two parents and we minded our own business. Nothing had prepared me to be here, and the more I thought about it, the more I had forgotten. It was so impossible, like I too had just been painted here by some mysterious artist; created and dropped off somewhere strange, to see what happened next.
It didn't feel like I belonged here at all. I wasn't entirely sure where I did belong, but this wasn't the place. I was a dark creature in a world of light; did that make the bad guy? A flock of birds suddenly chose that moment to flee from the trees, whipping their wings as they flew past me, through the canopy into the open air. To actually all them birds was a bit much, really; they were lines and blotches of colour, vaguely avian-shaped Vs in the morning sky. They chirped loudly and crossly, complaining at me as they went past in no certain words. I was definitely the alien here, with my wild brown hair and my light skin. I was more real than this place, and yet here I was anyway.
Suddenly, there was also the skunk. I was not alone any more.
He swiftly slid out among the low-lying bracken, raising his tail as he saw me. Strictly he was a reverse skunk, white with black stripes, where the white was a perfect white, the black a total black. He cast a shadow of a similar black, pausing to gaze at me, creeping steadily nearer as though I might wish to bolt. In this artistic world, he was detailed with a sly face and dark eyes. Still, he was meant to be here, unlike me. I was the odd one, and this seemed to fuel his spirit, making him less fearful.
He crept closer still, and I didn't move at all. I can't say whether I enjoyed that moment or not - paused in time, not daring to leave my post, entranced by the curious creature.
As weird as it sounds, suddenly I had an electric torch. The solid lump of black was mostly featureless, save for a very obvious button on top. At once I knew what I had to do, aiming the light-bringer at the offending skunk and flicking the button on top. All with the aim of driving it off; as pretty and perfectly made as it was, I thought even an uncanny skunk could still spray. Then I would be both lost and pungent, and that just wouldn't do.
I had trouble working out what happened after that. The light sparkled off the skunk, seeming to flow through it - such a strange creature whose shape twisted and spread out in the path of the beam, refracting it like a rainbow in the sky. Perhaps refraction is the best name I have for it, as the little mephitid split into components, tails waving through one another in slowly failing phase. Not one, nor two, not even three - there were seven of the little buggers, like the traditional rainbow. Roy G Biv. Seven colours of skunk, stood in a loose arrangement, each coming to terms with their new state of affairs.
A shiver flew down my spine as they all turned and looked at me, all at the same time. Fourteen eyes, which is fourteen more than I cared to look at right then.
In spite of my disquiet - or perhaps because of it? - they all began to spread out, scampering around me, surrounding me, a septagram of skunks inside which I stood, trapped by my surprise and flat-footedness - and the trivial details of being lost, confused, and completely without aid. I still had the torch, for all the good it had done; I didn't feel like seeing my current assailants multiplied sevenfold once more.
Almost like they were in one another's minds, they all turned at the same time, crouching and baring their glands, tails up. There was nowhere to run, and no time to even begin. Clouds billowed up around me, each of them spraying their scent in plumes of coloured gas that mixed and swirled and surrounded me completely. I could see nothing, my senses swamped by the onslaught, the pungency making my head swim. It was everywhere - I could taste it on my tongue, seeping into my mouth as I breathed and coughed, weighing damp and heavy on my skin and in my ears. I couldn't think and I couldn't move.
I could feel though. Just the one thing as I coughed, short of breath, trying to purge my system of the odd, tingly vapours. This genuine, widespread tightness gripped and squeezed me, squeezing me down smaller and smaller; unseen hands crushing my figure. Some of my mass must have joined the gases that began to dissipate in the air - but still the world was hazy, pleasant and saccharine, as though I had been drugged. Now the seven of them were at least half my size each, as opposed to the minute scale they had been at before, and they wasted no time in closing the distance between them and I.
Perhaps I tried to flee at that point, but my body shivered and rejected the notion of fast movement. Instead, the skunks piled onto me, a sea of fuzzy hide and bushy tails that felt oddly smooth to the touch - as I found out when they sat on me, weighing me in place. Instinctively I squirmed and flailed under them, trying to stand; my legs came together and I felt a couple of the skunks squish between them. They were slick, like some living brew that moved and swirled, and then they were one creature, one skunk in stripes of blue and indigo. It was about my size and seemed to be smiling at me. I shivered, and the other skunks sat on my limbs, one to each of arms and legs.
I served as a palette for the warm coloured skunks; red, orange, yellow, green.. but two of them stood and watched; the larger blue - and the purple, who bounced and scurried and seemed to be trying to get involved in the milieu. Deciding that Blue was as near to a leader as any of them at this point, it nudged and chittered and complained wordlessly, making irritated squeaking noises. Blue stayed silent, before tired paws grasped the purple tail and lifted it up. Confused, Purple was then swung around and about, the air and his features and colours blurring as I watched the strange scene play out - like some sort of children's TV.
I didn't get the point until Blue brought Purple down right on top of me. I felt the impact, squashing like jelly, a splatter like a gigantic paintball, hiding my dull and lifeless hues with this lurid purple goo. Yet somehow, unbelievably, the creature still wiggled and moved upon me, its body warm as it spread out, eyes popping up as it chittered and chirred some more, going about its new task of enclosing me completely. More squirming! I became more frantic than before, but trying to move with the skunk-stuff on me was like trying to move in treacle; slow, and only slower as it slid up my arms and legs. It was ignoring my clothing; I could feel it against my skin all over, up and down, alive and purposeful as it began to cover my face. I choked pre-emptively and my vision went rose-coloured; what now?
A little shiver went through me as my eyes opened again - in that moment something had changed. Purple had blotted out my form, smeared over all my body, left nothing but vivid, toony colour. I was no different to anyone else here now; beholden to the much relaxed rules that were cartoon physics. A weight of sorts had been lifted from my mind - not from my limbs though, they remained quite firmly on the floor.
A stream of chitters ran from my mouth, as Purple tried to get some coherence back; I could feel something large between my legs, stroking and pressing down there. Innuendo aside, my tail was beginning to return, a long and fluffy thing. I watched as my nose became visible in front of my eyes, swelling and pushing into a familiar muzzle, as the other skunks looked on cheerfully. Red and Orange began to nibble on my ears, pulling them larger and more rounded, nuzzling and making noises that stole my attention away. Blue looked on, a passive (yet amused) leader.
Oh, but the noises. Like wonderful nectar for my ears, I quite forgot to think about anything else. Some little whisper of subconscious said maybe that was the idea, but I couldn't think about that right now. Their tongues licked in, and further in, stretching and pressing right into my head, and from there into my mind. Skunk tongues can do that, you know.
Yellow and Green toyed with my feet, nosing and pushing them up into proper paws as their tails smoothed and sculpted along my belly and legs. Like playing with plasticine, they had plans to remake their missing septuplet. But by this point I was only faintly aware; those devious tongues in my thoughts, changing and adding to it, supplanting thoughts that weren't there before. Exploits - my exploits, the newest skunk in the forest. And it made more sense than being some human who just walked here - what a crazy idea that'd be!
After all, humans were big and tall, and I was just a small skunk. And those people definitely weren't purple. Well, a few of them were, but nobody worth speaking of. I giggled, eyes rolling up as my friends continued their good work, tongues lapping somewhere deep inside, making me flinch and squirm, ever so giddily. The inquisitive one; the slightly slow one, that was me. It wasn't bad, not at all! It was a life, and it had friends in, and that was all that mattered.
I looked up to see forepaws, shaping out of the featureless stumps that were my arms a moment ago, as a result of Blue's silly trick. Making me go squish! That wasn't fair, and I'd have to think up some way of getting back at him for that later. Still, I only had mitts; mitts for paws and for feet, a little body with some pudginess to the middle, and the cutest face of all my co-conspirators. Okay, the same face. Shhhh.
They let me up and I flipped onto my front and stood again, tail up with a gentle curl in the tip behind me. With my ears perked I held my head high, sniffing at nothing in particular. In the toon world, things only have scent if they're interesting and haven't been on camera yet. Yet here, the only creatures are the others and I. We came, we saw, we played about - and I bounded straight for Blue. He was absolutely expecting it, and caught me out of the air. So not fair. I squeaked and grumped at him but he still didn't put me down, and then the others giggled quite a lot especially Green. I made a mental note to find some good treetops from which I could push him to his doom.
It was fun bouncing about today. I don't feel like we got much done, but everyone seems well satisfied with themselves. Did I miss something? I hope not, since the episode is almost done - the sky has moved into sunset quite swiftly, and everyone's getting tired. So, Red steps into Orange, and Yellow hops on, and I sink slowly into Blue as he and Yellow sandwich Green...
The strange tangle of colours is surprising at first, my paws disappearing like food colouring in water, my sense of position and form disappearing into a natural swirl of waves and feelings and shared experience. Crammed into a small space with some other skunks very close to me, letting my self nicely mesh with everything and every one. I didn't feel connected before, but now that all's said and done, I'm totally at home again. The rainbow shades melt together into a nice, pleasing white, and I - we - flash our reverse-skunk tail for all the viewers to see.
And then, it's time to scurry off to find somewhere good to rest. The foliage jumps ad ruffles around us, our white mixing in with the greenery until eventually there's nothing to see but the natural sights of the Uncanny Valley. That's all, folks.