The Amazing Skunk Boy! (chapter 1 origins and transformations)
The first chapter of a teenage boy whose folks died, and has moved from NYC to New Hampshire, where he finds himself magically able to transform into a new superhero...Skunkboy! This is the first chapter, and origin.
The Amazing Skunk-Boy! (Part 1: The Origin)
Alex woke up and tapped snooze on the alarm-clock, buried his head in the pillows, and pressed his morning wood against the mattress, as if to drown out the day ahead. In half an hour, the bus would come by, hauling him off to school, that flat brick building with no windows that he'd learned to hate beyond anything. If the sign in front of it didn't mention 'Rockingham High', it might have been mistaken for a prison. Since his parents had died in a freak boating accident, he'd left Manhattan to live with his uncle, some 300 miles north in the New Hampshire woods. Small and wiry for his age, he'd grown up in a high-rise, going to a school for the arts in the bustling city, surrounded by theatre, museums and music, though he'd spent summers up north, and welcomed being close to nature. But this was different. Now he lived here, and instead of the alternative school where he had close friends, here, he got looked at like a freak and a faggot, something which he was reminded of daily, physically and verbally.
He sat up and looked out to the swaying pines in the pre-dawn moonlight, casting shadows across the room. Why did school have to start so damn early? Alex went downstairs, and poured a glass of orange juice, which cut into his stomach like tiny needles. He combed his straight black hair down, as if to cover his brown eyes, put on a blue windbreaker, and headed out. He always woke at the last minute. His feet felt damp in his red Converse All-Stars, and he shivered slightly. The temperature hovered around freezing, and the walk to the bus-stop took about 15 minutes down a dirt road. The smell of the dripping forest hung heavy in the air, wet leaves, moss, that sharp smell of sycamore, and somewhere, off in the distance, the faint muskiness of skunks. A fine, icy mist fell, the winds picked up, and the temperatures dropped. When he reached the bus-stop, and looked down the steep, winding hill the bus had to climb, the road looked like a glistening black snake, covered in a thin layer of ice. He saw the lights of the bus below, and heard the engine and wheels struggling. Then the bus gave up and took the main road to town. The rules said not to leave the bus-stop. Alex smiled: this meant a day off school; there was no way the bus could climb that hill. The only thing he would miss was the one friend he'd made, a pale, red-headed boy named Brad he'd sit next to on the way to school, legs pressed close by curving river roads. He'd hide his boner beneath his back-pack; they'd talk about comics and mountain-biking after school; Brad even did BMX racing, something Alex looked at as a feat as impossible as scaling Everest. They had little in common on the surface, but had become almost inseparable. Brad lived in a trailer with his mom, who was on welfare.
His uncle, an early riser, was already busy in his adjacent pottery studio: Alex liked him, a quiet man, never intrusive, yet one who sensed what he was going though, even with few words. His pottery typically took the form of various native animals; vases and planters in the abstract shapes of raccoon, otters, badgers, fox, skunks, weasels. For his last birthday, his uncle gave him a vase shaped like a skunk, tail lifted, and ready to spray: It sat on the boy's dresser, and he'd look at it, squint and smile, comforted at how such an animal had so few natural enemies, and how confidently poised it stood, despite a foul reputation. For a period, Alex had been so depressed at first, he'd taken to not showering often, and went to school rough and disheveled; kids laughed and said he stunk. "Hey, Skunk-Boy", this jock named Tom would call out, as another kid would shove him into a row of lockers. But thinking of this skunk-vase, Alex would mange to smile and not care. He'd lost so much already he'd loved, who gave a fuck about these assholes? Yet at the same time, he felt a deep loneliness and anger, a desire to get back at them-especially at Tom, and the jocks on the football team, but also some of the preppy 'smart' kids; one boy in particular, Ryan, who always talked about how he was going to Harvard or Yale, and spit on him, the first day. He wore pastel clothing from Vineyard Vines, and Alex hated him with a passion.
Walking back home, the mist had subsided to a fog in the early AM light, and Alex decided to take a longer trail home to the two-story log house. Most of the leaves had fallen, and the animals busied themselves gathering food before the snows, fattening themselves before the long winter. Lost in thought, he tripped over a hollow log, lost his balance, and fell into the wet leaves. A small, pink, nose poked out of the log, and then Alex saw the skunk before him, as he struggled to get up. But in his nervousness, and due to the slippery mud and leaves, his thrashing about only managed to scare the striped creature, and the skunk lifted its tail, and shot a fine mist that coated Alex almost entirely, before retreating back to its home. Choking for a few moments, Alex stood up, dazed. Once he got used to it, the smell overwhelmed him, intoxicated him, and something like a wave of warmth or a subtle electric current ran though his body. "Huh, not as bad as I thought", he said aloud, and walked home, to wash up.
At home, his uncle was still lost in his work. Alex stripped, put his clothes in the washer, and got in the shower. The skunk smell rose around him in the hot steam, and he felt charged with energy, and watched as he grew hard: yet this wasn't the time for that. He washed up as best he could, but the odor still clung to him. He lay down on the bed, and stared at the skunk-vase. His body tingled, and he was still hard. Unable to resist, he started to jack-off, and very rapidly grew close to cumming: But as he did so, he took the vase, and stroking himself, filled it with his seed, as if making an offering, driven by some deep, primal force. Weak, he set it back on the dresser, fell to his knees, and recalled a passage from one of his favorite stories, Srendi Vashtar, about a frail boy who also sought revenge, who had a pet mongoose of the same name, and his cruel aunt who was about to take that beloved pet away. (In the story, the next day, the mongoose brutally and mysteriously kills his cruel aunt.) Alex had never been one to pray, but he spoke the odd prayer that the boy in the story had spoken before the death of his aunt, imaging not a mongoose, but a skunk, and not a cruel aunt, but the cruelties he'd endured at school:
"Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful."
Why he'd done these things, Alex didn't know. It had been like a prayer to the chaotic forces of nature. He crawled into bed, and pulled the covers over his head, as if to hide the heady musk. He drifted quickly into dreams of scampering across the forest floor, a black and white striped animal, tail lifted like a warning flag behind him, and then, standing upright, his human self melding with that of the skunk. He'd never felt as free. And no, he would not bring his enemies death, but something else, something perhaps even more effective. He awoke to his uncle.
"My God! Alex! Woah, you must have got sprayed bad!", and he laughed good naturedly. "Let's get you cleaned up some more, and get these sheets clean. Got sprayed myself once as a boy, and most all dogs do. It'll just take some time to fade away. And funny, how I made you that skunk vase...maybe I should of given you a chipmunk instead."
Alex laughed. "Yeah, I guess it is kind of funny. I'm just glad you're not mad or anything."
"Mad? Naw, these things just happen, living in the woods. OK, Skunk-Boy, back in the tub, and I'll get some tomato juice."
~
The next morning, Alex awoke, and with a start, remembered the vase: Reaching in, he didn't feel anything sticky, or dried. Instead, only a round coin cast in a dull, tarnished metal: On one side, the full moon, on the other, a skunk with raised tail. He spit on it, and rubbed it in his hands, to polish it up. And as he did so, it happened: He felt his body change. His feet became broad paws, with sharp claws, he was covered in thick fur, marked by a white stripe running down what had been his human face; he still had use of his hands, though now, covered in fur, he noted his pointy claws. And he felt the oddest sensation behind him: He sported a large, fluffy tail he could lift and move. He almost fainted.
Standing before the mirror now, and still holding the coin he impulsively rubbed it again: in an instant, he resumed his human form. He smiled broadly and mischievously. Alex had ideas. He'd never felt this happy. Like it or not, the world was about to meet Skunk-Boy, and this time, he meant business.
To be continued...
(Excerpt of Srendi Vahstar by Saki, AKA H. H. Munroe, circa 1900)