by A. J. Mayall
And then there was another sickening crunch. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t just run in there, so I slowly backed away. I had video evidence for police, but I wondered if they were going to believe it. Heck, I didn’t even believe it and I’d just borne witness to it. What happened to Brandon, what continued to happen to Brandon filled me with dread, and from the sound of things, she’d done this before.
Good God, there had been video of toons popping into existence, so I knew it wasn’t all of them. But how many toons out there had been people?
That’s when I heard Pamela pipe up: “Oh, shit, I forgot to lock my front door. I’ll be right back.”
When she dashed out of the room and saw me, her eyes went wide.
I was shaking, still holding my phone. “I, um, left this behind. I just came to pick this…oh, fuck.”
“Markson!” she screamed as she lunged at me.
I tried to shove her off of me, but Markson came in and smacked me across the head with that sledgehammer.
Everything went black.
When I came to later, I was on that table. I don’t know how much time had passed, but the room was clean, and I could actually see everything in it. I’d been stripped down, tied up, and placed close to the small tear in reality.
As I got closer to it, it seemed to hum, pulsing a little bit faster as if it were alive somehow and knew that I was there, like it was aware of me. “Pamela, please, I won’t tell anyone! Who the fuck would believe me?”
Pamela held up my phone and replayed the recording. “I don’t know, Tyler, you tell me. I liked you, Tyler. Goddammit, why the fuck did you have to go and do this?”
“Did you kidnap that guy?”
“No, Markson kidnapped him. I’m just helping transition him. He’ll be happier like that anyway. Toons always are.”
“Yeah? I’d like to hear that from him!”
There was a chipper noise from outside the room, a faint whistling of a jaunty tune. The door opened and Brandon Butler, or the toon he had become, walked in and gave Pamela a high-four. “Golly, Miss Blake, I don’t know what came over me! I was all nervous and scared…it must just be new existence blues, I guess!”
“Brandon?” I said, realizing I’d actually never talked to the man before.
The beaver looked at me quizzically. “Who’s that? I’m Boost, Boost D. Beaver, the proud mascot of Greg Markson’s elite eSports team, the Timber Titans!” He’d been outfitted with something of a uniform, mostly just a red shirt and a gaming headset rested on his head.
He had a nervous look about him. Maybe he was just drawn that way. That’s when I realized Brandon Butler was, for the most part, dead. This toon had come from him, but it wasn’t him anymore.
Pamela walked over to me. “I’m going to call Snappy in a few minutes. You’ve been nice to me, and you did some amazing work around the house. I’ve got an idea for a few possibilities of what you can turn into, but in the end, it’s really more about you inside. We can kind of guide the process a bit, but it’s never exactly what we ever set it out to be. It’s not like I can do specific commission work on this.”
“Don’t act like you’re fucking sad about this. You could just let me go. Delete the video! No one will believe me!”
“Yeah, but you know the truth, and it’s not something I can risk now, because you look like the type of person who wouldn’t actually help me out with this. I’ll tell you what; it’s damn good money. People want to make folks disappear. I just make them disappear in a way where at least a little piece of them remains.
“Let me out, please! I’ve got a life.”
“You’ve got a boyfriend, that’s it. Your job was here, and you told me yourself, you live in a shitty little apartment in Animætropolis. The only thing stopping you from being a toon right now is the fact that you’ve got a boyfriend.” She let out a puff of air. “Since I like you, I’m gonna do you a solid. I’ll call up Snappy and have him bring down a good old-fashioned classic copyright page, okay? From the old days. Once this is done, you’ll have a whole lifetime of memories. You’ll never have been a success, but that’s kind of par for the course with you, and I’ll even do you one better, and give you a foil.
“What the hell are you talking about, a foil?”
“You know, a partner, someone who gets in your way, someone you’ll have something of a relationship with. It’s pretty much the closest thing that toons have to marriage, and honestly, in the cartoon community, the majority of them tend to be the same sex, so that should suit you.”
“Pamela, please…”
She walked over and began filling the embalming machine with ink and a few other chemicals. “I’m not gonna lie. This is gonna hurt more than you’ve ever been hurt before.”
“I don’t know. There was this one really shitty earache I had—double ear infection—I wanted to off myself from it.”
She smiled, but in a solemn way. “Gallows humor! It’s a good sign, actually. Having a sense of humor will just make you funnier once this whole thing’s over with. I’ll drink a cocktail to you once we’re done and whoever comes out of this room does. The thing is, it doesn’t work if I put a painkiller in you, so you’ve got to go to the whole process.”
She raised the device over her head. I struggled as hard as I could in my straps.
“I’m gonna tell you what I’m going to do, so you can prepare for it. I’m gonna take this trocar here, and I’ll jam it into your carotid artery. Then, I’ll turn the machine on and snip your jugular. This is going to pump a lot of ink through your body. Once I’ve got it about halfway done, and the process is started, I’ll speed it along a little bit extra for you. It’s going to hurt more, but it will be over faster. I’m going to have to stab you a lot of times in the gut and perforate pretty much every organ, but it’s what needs to be done. Tyler, just know…I don’t like doing this.”
“Pamela…fuck you.”
“Yeah, I suppose I deserve that.”
Searing pain crashed through my neck when she brought that thing down and forced it down the artery. I could feel it under my rib cage. For God’s sake, she was in my heart!
I sputtered and screamed.
She walked over and flipped the machine on. Pain unlike anything I’ve ever endured coursed through my chest. I wanted to grab my heart as it overfilled and inflated like a balloon before it squeezed, forcing that ink and blood slurry up into my skull.
My thoughts became cloudy, but my perception sharpened at the same time. I don’t know if it was adrenaline or some part of the process.
She took a scalpel made an incision on the other side of my neck. I tried to gasp for air, and I did so with difficulty. God, this hurt.
Boost looked at me and then at Pamela. “Miss, I don’t think you should be hurting him. I mean, I don’t know about a lot of things but that—that looks like a crime or something.”
Pamela looked at the beaver. “Go to Markson and tell him this: tell him that Miss Blake asked you to ask him to hold your copyright, and tell you not to worry, and forget anything bad that happened in this room.”
He blinked and shrugged. “Okay, I guess you know best.” He reached over and patted my foot with a gloved hand. “I dunno, is this a hospital or something? I’m still kinda new to—”
“Boost…”
“Yes, Miss Blake, sorry,” he said and shuffled out, his tail slapping the ground every now and then.
I felt sick to my stomach; there was about a gallon of ink in me at least, but she kept adding more into the machine. That’s when I looked at the tear. I could swear I felt a presence in the room.
Is this death? Is that what this is? Is this me dying here?
She pulled the trocar out of my neck and stabbed it into my guts. Searing hot agony danced on every nerve ending, and that’s when I saw my flesh bubble. Again, I’ve never been the fittest guy, but whatever I was turning into had no intention of being chubby. My fat began to literally melt off me. Skin sloughed off wi
th it and dripped like candle wax mixed with honey.
My hands ached. I felt something moving inside of me and that’s when something in my skull cracked. I crossed my eyes as the tip of my nose swelled. I tried to reach for it, but the bindings just wouldn’t give. My skull—God—it narrowed. I could tell the bones were under enormous pressure, like they were all in a vise, all being dislocated from each other. I watched in horror as a long slender nose came into the center of my vision, a huge round inkblot at the end.
My skin went pale, then black and blue, fading with a sort of jaundice. I felt myself retch; blood and God knows what else erupted from me.
I looked down as the fingers on my hand swelled at the first and second knuckles. Then my middle fingers fell off, first on the left hand and then on the right.
Pamela winced when she saw that. “Ooh, losing the middles? You’re going to be G-rated. The thought of that hadn’t actually crossed my mind.”
Brandon, or Boost as he was now, appeared to be the same way. While appearing male, being G-rated meant his genitalia was either never visible, or just outright erased.
Soon enough, the white-gloved hands of a toon rested on the end of my forearms.
I suddenly felt like I was being pulled on the rack. My body didn’t want to be as tall as I was, and it was stretching me out. That’s when the worst pain kicked in. I looked down my melting abdomen to my manhood and felt what can only be described as a jackhammer being taken to my cock and balls; they were melting into me.
I slammed my head back against the table, trying to knock myself into unconsciousness. Unfortunately, either from an endorphin rush or shock or something in the chemical slurry, there was no passing out for me.
I felt something shift in me; something long and hard got pushed up, breaking my pelvic bone, jostling punctured organs, and crawling up my throat. I choked on it. Without even knowing what it was, I opened my mouth and coughed and coughed, trying to get this thing out because it was cutting off my oxygen. Even without air, I wasn’t being granted unconsciousness.
With one heave, I saw the majority of my left femur coated in…fluids slide and fall on the floor. The next few minutes were spent getting to know many internal organs that I’d known I possessed but had never actually seen.
Unlike Brandon, who was skinny and became chubby and had most everything come out of his mouth, I was more split from sternum to pelvis due to my body not wanting to have its pear shape I normally had.
I looked down at my bare groin and saw I could see orange there. Smooth, animated flesh. Not animated as in “still alive”; you know what we’re talking about here.
My feet ached. I could feel not only the pain from my ankles due to being stretched thin on the straps, but also, my size 14s were wanting to grow a bit. I screamed as my toes turned black and the pinky toe on my left foot twisted around itself and then shot like a cork from a wine bottle, hitting the ceiling and landing near Pamela.
I groaned. Everything hurt. I was weak, I was tired. I had no idea what I even looked like now. My arms felt like rubber bands stretched to the breaking point. Pamela seemed much larger than she had before. The room seemed bigger, too. I had to be about the same height as Boost was, somewhere between three and four feet tall—average for most toons.
My lower back suddenly had a spike of pain. I felt something crawl out of me. At first, I was worried I’d somehow evacuated my bowels, and then I saw a white tail tip surrounded by orange snake out between my legs.
Jesus Christ, this is really happening.
My eyes hurt and my vision went dark for a moment. I tried blinking a few times and my eyelids seemed to sink in. That’s when I remembered Brandon’s eyes melting away, and I whimpered like a child. There was nothing else to do.
My head hurt. I felt like I was carrying around something inside of me that my body desperately wanted to get out. It was stuck and my body would try harder and harder to eject the unwanted bit.
I coughed and coughed, and my lower jaw fell out. I screamed as my right eye seized in pain. I blinked repeatedly and could soon see, but only out of the left eye.
That’s when I realized what was going on. Brandon had coughed up his skull; mine was trying to fit through the first hole it could find…my right eye socket. Flesh stretched wider and wider until you could put a fist in it.
My head birthed my skull, which fell and cracked on the ground below. A sickening splat told me my brain was outside my body…but I could still think. I could still feel. I was still me.
I was exhausted. Words were beyond me at this point, every nerve ending in my being hurt like I have never been hurt before.
I felt like I’d been vivisected.
Pamela took my phone and dialed Snappy. “Yeah, Snappy? Hi, it’s Pamela. I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve actually had another toon emerge tonight. Um, I’m out of my usual stuff. This one looks to be something kinda special. And—yeah, could you bring me one, please? I owe you big. Oh, Tyler? He left his phone behind. I don’t know if he’s going to be back. Yeah, I know he was working really hard for you, but if anything, I think this new fellow who just popped in might be a better fit for working on the estate.”
With that, I passed out.
CHAPTER 8
When I woke up, Pamela was in the corner, filling out paperwork. I was still strapped to the table, entire body aching. It didn’t hurt as much as it had before, but my arms and legs were still painfully stretched far longer than they should have been.
I tried to speak, but duct tape had been wrapped around my mouth, or muzzle now. For God’s sake, I was a talking animal. I looked down over myself: orange fur, white stomach.
Okay, you can handle this. You’re a fox. You’re a cartoon fox. This is absolutely insane, but you’re still you.
That’s when I remembered what they had said about stage 1 being done.
“Mmfrr mmf hmm-hmm,” was all I got out.
Pamela turned and looked at me. “It’s okay, Tyler. We’ll get through this together and try to think of a name for you. If I undo the tape, do you promise not to scream, bring attention to yourself?”
I paused for a moment, realized I was out of options, and nodded. She came over and peeled the tape off my face. It hurt like hell, but it was nothing compared to what she had put me through before.
“It’s okay, Tyler, we can talk now before we start the next stage.”
“Come on, you don’t have to do this. Just reverse the process!”
She looked at me, puzzled. “There is no reversing this. Trust me, if I could turn toons into humans, do you know much more money I would make, even if I could just do it temporarily? The amount of stuff that toons would be able to experience…heck, some of them don’t even know what pain is and have actually been curious about it.”
“Really, just…”
“It’ll be okay. I’m going to do some terrible things to you and, eventually, your willpower will break. Your body’s instinct for self-preservation will kick in and start shaking off injuries after a while. And every time you do, you lose a little bit of your humanity. The more toon you act, the less human you’ll be. I don’t have access to a steamroller, or else I’d take you into the back lawn and handle you that way. This is going to hurt a lot.
“Once it’s over, you’ll be a nice, friendly fox, who’ll be just kinda confused. You’ll have a good chunk of your personality traits but be eager to live life to the fullest. You won’t have to worry about a world where people don’t give a shit about you and toss you aside. You’ll outlive them all.”
“If it’s so good, why haven’t you done it to yourself?”
“Trust me, me as a toon wouldn’t work. Anyway, it took me years to figure out how this all operates, and I’d probably lose that information once it was done. So, I’m setting you up with a good, classic copyright, pre-Code, or at least around the time of the Code. As we can see, you’re in color; you’ve been modernized, so you’re not gonna be at all eager to hurt peop
le, even accidentally. From the looks of you, you’re going to be pretty kid-friendly, too, so all of that cursing of yours will be going out the window.”
She rubbed her temples, and I could tell that carrying and disposing of what had been my body had likely exhausted her, but she had to cover her bases.
Pamela continued, “I’ve already talked with Snappy and since I told him that Tyler said that he no longer really wanted to work for him, he could take you on doing the same odd jobs. Pay will be the same. You’ll be taken care of. Heck, we’ll probably be really good friends.”
“Pamela, with all due respect, fuck you.”
“That is not the sort of thing we like to hear,” she grumbled. “Toons like you shouldn’t talk like that; better cut those words out.”
She walked behind me, and I tried to crane my neck to see what she was grabbing. That’s when I heard the pull cord of a chainsaw.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Don’t worry, you can’t die.”
“What are you going to do with that thing?”
“I’m going to rev it and shove it down your throat. One, it’s going to hurt a hell of a lot, and two, there might still be some residual things inside of you, and this will help loosen them.”
Panicked, I said, “You said you want to talk. You want to talk?”
“Yeah, okay, fine,” she said, idling the motor. “What do you want to talk about? The least I can do is give you some last words.”
“Fairfax Fawkes.”
“What?”
“That’ll be my name. Fairfax Fawkes. Might as well keep some semblance of my identity.”
“Okay. F-A-I-R-F-A-X, last name F-O—”
“No, not F-O-X.”
“Oh?”
“No, F-A-W-K-E-S.”
She shrugged. “If that’s what you want. Why that spelling?”
“Because like Guy Fawkes, I am going to burn everything, and I’m going to remember this. I don’t care what you say.”
She wrote it down and filled in other aspects of the copyright. “I measured your height while you were out. 3’11.5”, definitely G-rated, and I have you down to have a foil.”