Finding Home
Story by Muskwalker on SoFurry
Imported from SF2 with no description provided.
The morning sun was just starting to illuminate the mountains as I pulled up to the last house I had on my route for tonight, a modest place with the name “Tantivy" on the mailbox.
Even though I'd… lost my own home and had been living out of my truck for almost half a year now, I still was able to keep up steady employment—small blessings, I guess.
Business being as good as it was, I usually didn't even have to sleep outside; I'd get flirty with the last customer of the night, and if I managed to help clear out their pipes in more ways than one, so to speak, they'd let me sleep in their bed in the name of post-coital recovery while they went to work.
(Someone once told me that sounded like using people, but I feel like it's a fairer trade than just being the slutty otter plumber who only gets paid for the solo work.)
I came up to the door and knocked, introducing myself to the gorilla who came to the door. “Kalvin Darkwater, Darkwater Plumbing. Mister Tantivy?"
“Yes sir, this way."
He led me through a living room filled with religious iconography—sort of stuff I never paid attention to—and back through the house, through the master bedroom where a mountainous polar bear was sleeping, and into the master bath. “My fiancé has reinforced toilets at his place next door… but sometimes when he's staying over it's too much of a walk for him. Bad knees, you know. Anyway, this time my toilet couldn't take it."
“Ah—hyper?" The problem was immediately recognizable. Sometimes the sheer amount of material coming from a hyper's hole was enough to clog a pipe far more than a flush could handle, and a plunger is far too inadequate a tool to clear it out.
Fortunately this is just the kind of thing I'm good at. I let my body change, toolbelt and clothes falling through me as I slipped into my slime form. “Nothing a little liquid plumber can't handle!"
I climbed into the toilet and powered through the clog, bit by bit—the bear had really done a number on it. It was pretty straightforward work though, and after a few minutes I'd broken through and felt the rush of the water in the bowl flowing through me as it drained down.
The gorilla was giving me an odd look as I emerged from the toilet. (I didn't blame him; most people naturally have a negative reaction to a murky green blob of anything coming out of the plumbing, much less one that plans to charge them for it.)
I turned my back so as not to flash him and made my body solid again. “I don't suppose you'd let me use your shower?"
The shower was mostly symbolic; even though when I solidified I was dry and not, say, soaked in toilet water, there's a ritual to cleanliness that comforts people after you've been in an unclean place. (Of course it's also a convenient excuse to get out of one's clothes for further fun…)
From the shower stall I heard a voice outside the bathroom, presumably the fiancé's—“You said you'd wake me up when he got here," he said.
“You know I hate waking you up, snow poff," Tantivy said. “Anyway he's already done and just cleaning up in there now, nothing to worry about."
“It's not that I'm worried about him being here… it's just that he's a friend of mine. Musk and Matty's mate. Though—I guess maybe you never met any of them, but they gave me this. It's been a while. I'll go say hi."
There was a creak of wood and a squeak of springs, heavy footsteps, and then the giant polar bear was in the doorway.
Now, while I may be a bit round, I'm naturally a short person; the bear, on the other hand, had to watch his head as he came in, and shuffled sideways as he did so to squeeze the bulk of himself in. His belly hung past his knees and he supported himself on a cane.
Despite what I'd overheard, I didn't recognize him at all, and I know I would have—even without his size, the silver streaks in his beard were distinctive enough.
“Darkwater, you ol' slimeball! How've you been?"
He moved forward as if to join me in the shower, but I shut it off and stepped out first. “I'm sorry," I said. “You seem to know me, but I don't know you." It seemed like he was a friend, and somehow I felt more comfortable here than I had been in a long time, so I opened up a bit further. “I, um, lost my home a while ago." I pushed the limits of what I thought I'd be able to share. “I mean, I don't know where it is. I guess it wasn't the only thing I lost."
The bear frowned, and went back into the bedroom and picked up a phone. “Musky! It's Pollux. Yeah, long time no see. Hey, your otter's here, I think he has amnesia or something. Says he's lost his home."
I dried myself off and got back into my clothes as he talked. The possibility of going home was a lot more important than some after-work fun time.
“Your otter. Darkwater. Your mate? We met at my 4th of July party? He crammed you up my ass and cooked us both for Thanksgiving dinner?"
I did what?
“Matty and Rockwell? Who— Nevermind, I'll figure out what's going on and call you back. Maybe come by later. Sure thing." He ended the call. “Tantivy!"
I'd known that there were people with the ability to block the magic of others, of course. And I'd known that if I'd been able to go to one to start with, I probably could have found my way home the very first day.
But when I'd tried—and whenever I attempted doing anything even remotely related to asking for help—I couldn't. Attempts to precommit, attempts to write it down for others to find, attempts to whisper it to myself in hopes someone else might overhear, all had the same result: my body refused to comply, like a car that wouldn't start.
“I lost my house" was the closest thing to the truth about it I was able to say before today.
And now I sat across from Tantivy in his kitchen. Help was here, and now that I dared to hope…
Time slowed down in a parody of Zeno's paradox as the gorilla reached his arm out towards me.
The morning sunlight shining through the windows turned into darkness.
The afterimage of Tantivy's expression seemed to turn crueller as it faded away.
I heard a voice, which my brain insisted I did not recognize.
“DO NOT FUCK WITH ME."
I felt a blow like a punch to the face in the darkness.
I reflexively tried to take on slime form, but my body failed to respond.
I felt a slash like a knife across the back.
I tried to cry out for help, but my body failed to respond.
I felt a blunt length stabbing under my tail.
I tried to fight back, but my body failed to respond.
Unseen hands held me up as the abuse escalated. In the darkness there could be no flinching from the battering that broke my muzzle and cracked my ribs, the knives that cut deep and left me wishing I could at least scream out my pain. I couldn't keep track of how many unseen assailants violated my ass, rough quick dry thrusts leaving me raw and sore as various fluids dripped down my legs.
I don't even know what I've done wrong. I just want to go home.
I could smell that I was covered in blood.
And then there was an unexpectedly gentle touch on my shoulder, and I saw Tantivy's face again.
The paralysis faded before the pain did; I fell out of the chair as I reflexively tried to escape the nightmare that was already starting to disappear.
Tantivy's magic had worked, at least: as I lay there crying on the floor I was starting to remember. My home. Musky, my skunk. Matty, my roo. Pollux.
Rockwell.
The thought of the rat filled me with the terror of he's going to kill me and the absolute rage of I'm going to kill him at the same moment.
He's going to kill me.
I'm going to kill him.
He's going to kill me.
I was shouting it now, completely lost in the pain and the helplessness. Pollux and Tantivy both held me down until the gorilla was able to neutralize the emotions.
“He stole my mates," I said, after I told them about the nightmare the rat had left as a warning. “Literally brainwashed them into forgetting I existed. And he's living in my house. And if I go back there…" I shuddered. “He'll kill me for good, or worse—he'll lock me in my own head and put me through a hell a hundred times worse than that. Forever. I don't… I don't know what to do."
“We'll call the police," Tantivy said.
I blinked. That was not the sort of plan I'd been looking for.
“You want vengeance, I know," he said. “But hatred can't reduce hatred. A battle like that will only escalate. You need to bring him to justice instead."
“Don't mind the platitudes too much," Pollux said, leaning in to me but winking at his mate. “It's kind of his job."
The gorilla snorted. “My job is to get people out of Hell. Everyone I can. And I guarantee you that the rat who has done all these things to you is not having a good life, either. Even he can be saved, if you don't go in with guns blazing. Now come on, Pollux will drive us to the station."
“I've got a truck, I can drive—"
“No, you can't," he said, getting up and putting one of those leathery hands on my shoulder. “The rat's spell isn't gone, it's just suppressed. And my influence wears off after a couple of hours without reinforcement. If you don't stay with us until everything can get sorted, you'll start to forget again, or… or worse. Now come on."
I sighed, and followed them out to Pollux' Durango.
This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.