The giggles and stares slammed into his face like a blast of cold air when he walked into school the next day. He wore a scowl on his face, trying to quash the humiliation burning up his chest and into his cheeks as the usual chatter in the hallway began to go quiet, people pausing their habitual motions to gawk at Matthias’s new features. He fumbled the combination for his locker at least three times before throwing his bag inside and picking his textbooks out with a grip so hard his knuckles turned white. Then something tugged at his lower back, on his flashy new appendage.
He whirled around to see Noble Hartstone. The wild gleam in his eyes made Matthias feel like he’d just been hunted down by a wolf, and he only just took notice of the other three boys who had stayed to guffaw at the bristling little Matthias. His knees trembled and he resisted the urge to shrink back against his locker; last time these boys had come so close to him, they’d kicked him to the ground behind the school, left him with dirt in the wounds on his knees and a shoulder that he’d had to pop back into place himself. But they couldn’t do that here, in the middle of the hallway.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Matthias snapped.
“You look… interesting,” Noble commented. “Is that tail stuck in your ass, faggot?”
Gage Reed grinned, palm flat on the locker beside Matthias’s head. He opened his mouth as if to say something when Matthias’s fluffy tail flailed in the air; he yelped and pulled away with his hands up.
“Shit. Don’t wanna catch something from that,” he said, and all four of them whooped in amusement. Matthias tried to grab it, but Noble’s hand came down to clench Matthias’s wrist in a grip so hard it made him wince, slamming it against the locker so he couldn’t get to his tail.
As Noble held him, the other blond boy said, “You’re the one who came to school like this. If we hit you, you’re fuckin’ askin’ for it!”
Matthias just about hurled his textbooks into their skulls.
It’s not my fault, he wanted to snarl at them. He couldn’t control this fucking tail; if that was the case, it would be tucked inside his pants and nobody would even be taking a second glance at him. He wanted to hook his nails into Noble’s arm and rip through the skin, dragging bloody gashes so deep that they grazed his bones. Give something to Noble that the idiot couldn’t control for once, see how it felt. But he was still mostly human, able to be held accountable for his actions, so it was with a shuddered breath that he forced himself to stay quiet and calm down. Noble released his grip, the narrow hallway and sea of students preventing him from doing much else, so Matthias hugged his textbooks to his chest and rushed away. His sex toy of a tail practically waved the boys goodbye; he lowered his head to block out their howls of laughter.
____
“Mr Schlesinger, would you remove your accessories before we get started? They’re not appropriate.”
Matthias had found that, in his fury, the most random and scathing insults sprung from some deep, dark pit of his brain with concerning ease. Currently, as he dragged his fed-up gaze to the teacher, he was thinking, That shirt you’re wearing isn’t appropriate; if you bend over, Noble might get a boner. Why don't you go home and change? Then he said, his voice flat, “I can’t remove them.”
The teacher raised her eyebrows. “And why is that?”
“They won’t come off.” Heat crept up the back of his neck. Fucking hell.
The teacher sighed, as if he was some irritating child she didn’t have the patience to deal with. It made him want to curl up and die. “Would you like some help?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “I’ll send you to the restroom with a friend. Ah—Jelly, would you go with him? Just wait outside until he’s done, and then come right back, but you’re responsible enough to know that already.”
Across the room, a girl with a cascade of auburn hair eagerly rose to her feet. Class rep. “‘Course, Hallie.” Then she looked at Matthias with kind brown eyes, gesturing for him to follow.
“So, you can’t get your ears or tail off?” Jelly asked once they were in the hallway. The restrooms were on the other side of the school, so Matthias supposed he had to put up with human conversation until then. And what would he do once he got to the bathroom? No hat would stay on his head, and his tail wouldn’t behave itself—maybe he should just go home. And do what? his brain prodded at him. Sit there and wait for them to disappear? Unlikely; the fuzzy sprout of the tail he’d noticed two days ago had only gotten bigger and then brought ears along with it.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Matthias mumbled. “I didn’t attach them myself, so I don’t know how to remove them.”
Jelly made an intrigued noise as she peered up at Matthias’s bushy hair, so unruly that it made his cat ears flick to get it away. “I can try if you want. Maybe whoever attached them did it with super glue, but in that case… we’d have to cut your hair off.”
Matthias cringed inwardly at the thought. His hair was the only thing that protected him from people, specifically his mother, who exited her bedroom maybe twice a day seemingly just to comment on how disappointingly unattractive Matthias’s face was, and to tell him to smile. But he supposed getting rid of these ears would be worth it. Now he had gathered two options—stay home and wait it out, or cut these new feline features off. He’d already experienced the pain of skin-breaking beatings, and it would rid him of humiliating experiences much faster, so by the time they reached the bathroom he thought that he’d pretty much figured it out.
Jelly had given him a reassuring smile and a, “Let me know if you need anything,” as he entered, but right now, as he sat on a toilet and stared at the dark blue stall door under a poor, flickering light, he needed to be at home with a pair of scissors in his hands. This need worsened when he had to hold his tail in a tight fist to stop it from flopping into the toilet.
He pulled out his phone to text his brother and immediately froze. Tilting it this way and that, Matthias could make out his own face reflected on the black screen, but instead of the pale, miserable boy he was accustomed to seeing, there was something different.
That’s not me, he thought.
Bringing a hand to his cheek, he could feel what he was seeing—they were whiskers, sprouting from his fuzzy skin. He ran two fingers over his forehead and felt proper, silky fur, and if he touched the skin on his bumpy nose, it came away slightly wet.
I’m turning into a cat?
Panic coursed through his veins; how would he live, looking like this? He might enjoy being a loner but he didn’t want that to be because he was a mutant. He’d get bullied so much worse. A terrified whimper leaked from his throat; he closed his eyes and opened them again, over and over, unable to escape that horrific human-cat hybrid in his phone reflection. He put shaking hands to his face and tried to claw through the fur, to remove it, but he only succeeded in collecting orange cat hair under his nails.
Why is this happening to me?
He curled over and put his head on his knees. Jelly was still waiting outside for him, and he hadn’t even attempted to remove his cat features—only grown more! How was he meant to leave the stall looking like this?
He unlocked his phone and opened the app he used with Franny, sending a quick message asking if he could pick Matthias up. Franny was often at home; tending to the Schlesinger garden, selling his beautiful flowers and teaching people how to grow and sustain gardens. Even if he was currently on three separate calls with people all across the country discussing anything and everything about plants, he’d make time to attend to Matthias’s needs.
I'll be right there ♡, was Franny’s instant reply. His usual "girly" way of texting was just one thing that Matthias liked about him, how it made him feel like it was okay to be a little different from the norm. Sometimes he thought it was strange, how the only person he felt comfortable around was his brother when everyone else seemed to have such a wide circle of friends and teachers and partners, but he supposed it made sense. Wasn’t blood meant to be thicker than water? It went something like that.
Though Franny sure hadn’t come up with any remedy to removing his cat features, despite Matthias’s desperate pleas before school today. He supposed he had been a bit annoying the last couple of days; he’d knocked over a fresh cactus cutting and, maybe, perhaps, possibly, he had threatened to kill himself if Franny didn’t kiss the toast he had for breakfast before he ate it. God… Of course Franny wouldn’t want to help him.
He began aggressively rubbing his eyes to stop the tears from leaking out.
When he’d calmed himself, he slid his phone back into his pocket and stood up, the toilet automatically flushing even though he hadn’t used it, and exited the stall. After washing his hands and looking at his thinning pupils in the mirror, he decided to just risk calling out.
“Jelly?”
“Right here! Everything okay?”
He was rather glad that Mrs Hallie had chosen a girl to accompany him, because there was no way she could have come into the bathroom to see him, even if she wanted to. As he dried his hands, he said, “I’m going home. My brother is picking me up, so you don’t have to wait.”
“Alright…” came the reply, although it was slow, and Matthias wondered if she could tell something was wrong. After a moment, she said, “Okay. I’ll let Hallie know. I hope you manage to get your cat ears off!”
When Matthias was sure she was gone, he tried to flatten his bush of hair over his face like a curtain and then left the stall, headed for the hallway that opened up to the carpark. Due to the small teacher-to-student ratio, it was uncommon to see a teacher wandering the halls with a free period, so Matthias easily made the journey from his locker—from which he gathered his bag, not bothering to retrieve his Geometry textbook from his desk in Hallie’s room—to the carpark, where an old yellow Suzuki sat rumbling in place, waiting for him to get in.
Soothing floral scents hit him as soon as he slid into the passenger seat. He moved awkwardly to buckle himself in, hugging his bag to his chest and keeping his hair very much in front of his face. Franny owned this car; his personality radiated from it. Comforting, anticipating. The door shut, placing the two in silence.
“You okay?” his brother asked as the car began to move. “I didn’t tell the school, just so you know. They’re gonna call me later.” A beat of silence, in which Matthias let his forehead fall onto his backpack. “You haven’t looked up once. What’s wrong?”
“It was my ears,” Matthias mumbled. Not a total lie. Somehow, as he peered over his bag and out the window, he could feel his bones ever-so-slowly shrinking, as if he was really going to transform into an animal. The darker hair under his armpits, in his underwear and over his legs thickened into fur; his vision flashed brightly before fading, the summery green trees gaining an unnatural grey tinge. He knew that Franny would find a way to help, after cooing or maybe looking horrified, if he presented his cat face. But... he felt as if something else was needed before he felt completely comfortable.
“Oh, Matty. No one hurt you, did they?”
“No.” Matthias remembered Noble’s firm grip around his tail as he’d yanked at it, but he hadn’t gotten hurt. “I think I might cut them off.”
The car jolted just as Franny’s demeanour flipped. “What? Matthias, that’ll hurt you! Don’t even think of mutilating yourself just because some kids said they don’t like how you look.”
“But they’re annoying. And it won’t hurt, it’ll just be a cut.”
“Well, then I’m taking away all the sharp objects as soon as we get home.”
Matthias wanted to grumble and groan like a standoffish kid but he really did like Franny’s attention, Franny’s care. There was just one thing that he knew about intimacy between people and it was that intimacy should never be shown to the public, no matter how much you like the other person. Franny had taught him that, and that was why, as they turned the corner to their lonely but beautifully green street where nobody ever drove, he finally felt a small kiss on the side of his head. Warmth bloomed where Franny had touched, made his stomach fizz like a shaken soda can. A little smile grew on Matthias’s furry face.
“Your ears are so soft,” Franny remarked, his voice as gentle as his lips.
“Nobody else likes them.”
“Well, I do, and if you cut them off then I’ll figure out some herbal concoction to regrow them. I reckon catnip would do the trick.”
Matthias inhaled more of the flowery scent that always followed Franny around, watching the left-pointing sign of their street come into view as they topped the hill, when Franny tapped on the rearview mirror.
“Hey, look at that—someone’s coming up behind us. Today must be special.”
Matthias blinked and looked in the mirror, surprised as well to see a white patrol car speeding behind them, bouncing on its massive wheels. A sudden wave of nausea struck him in the gut and he drew his knees up, curling over his bag.
“We’ll be home soon, Matty,” Franny said. “It’s okay. For now, though, I am curious what someone is doing down our road...” The switching sound of the turn signal flickered on as they approached the corner. To Matthias, it had always sounded like someone saying, tick, tock, tick, tock, but all he heard now was the loud engine of the car behind them. He wanted to ask Franny why it wasn’t slowing down, but maybe it was still pretty far away; Matthias didn’t have great depth perception at the moment. “Now, let’s look over to the left, all clear. To the—”
The only thing Matthias registered in the next few moments was the tightness of his seatbelt and a horrible, striking flash of pain that zipped through his entire body. It lasted only a second, but it was enough to have him immobilised completely as he hung from the seatbelt of their tipped-over car, his neck feeling as if it had been severed completely.
Franny seemed to have been shocked silent, and even though Matthias could just see his brother trying to get them both out of the car, he couldn’t feel a thing.
He didn’t even feel when a car revved up its engine and crashed right into them again, skating their car across the road and slamming them into an electricity pole, crushing the roof and windows of Franny’s Suzuki. Matthias’s neck bent at the sort of angle he might expect a snake to achieve with ease, but as he attempted to disengage himself from the confines of his seatbelt, he heard a wet pop from deep inside his bones and everything went black.
____
A moment of solitude; maybe that was all he wanted. But people don’t always get what they want, and Matthias’s eyes fluttered open to the most crowded place he had ever seen.
Immediately he ducked his head. He was still half-cat, and who knows what a stampede of people would do to someone who looked like him? However, looking up through his hair, he noticed that something was off about these people. It wasn’t just that they were all shoving together, coming closer and closer to Matthias as they did so like a melting bar of chocolate; it wasn’t even that they all seemed to be in an endless black void with no distinguishable ground or sky or end. It was that they weren’t solid.
He zoned in on two people and observed the way they pushed and shoved to launch themselves deeper into the crowd. The reason they were all wiggling around so much was that they kept falling through each other. The taller person’s elbow sank into the other’s face, and another person’s entire body had gotten stuck halfway through another’s as they shouted and cursed at each other in irritation. None of them had distinguishable traits; they all seemed to be mostly transparent, facial features morphing into the next person’s, clothes overlapping so Matthias couldn’t tell who was wearing what.
And, despite the droning noise of the crowd, Matthias felt peaceful. Like all his organs had floated away, his body had no needs, and all that was left was the odd sensation that a breeze could travel right through his empty chest.
“Matthias!” someone called. “Matty! Matty!”
Somewhere in the distance—his brother’s voice. What was he trying to say? Matthias squinted hard into the black sky and tried to see over the endless crowd of ghost heads, tripping through people, tripping over people, finding that he seemed to be getting shorter every time he tried to jump and get a better view.
“Franny!” he called. The crowd pushed him along, to some destination he was sure was just bullshit. Being with other people never led to anything good. So, what could he do here? Continue to call his brother’s name into nothingness? Kill himself? With what? he thought, noting the emptiness of the world around him. Banging his head on the floor? It was the only solid thing around. He scowled, desperation contorting his face. He had to find his brother. The writhing crowd didn’t let up, so he sighed in defeat.
“Fine,” he muttered. “I’ll see what’s got you guys so excited.”
There was an immediate pull that accompanied his decision. As if there was someplace he had to be, but all these liquified people kept blocking his way! He tried to elbow his way through the crowd but they got stuck, like glue. He tore his elbows out of the peoples’ chests with a grunt that came out more like a mrrrow.
This was odd. He tried to make a noise again, and out came a meow. He looked down and his hands were paws. And finally, his body was able to make the transformation from human male to tomcat. He sank down below the knees of the crowd, wondering now how he could avoid getting stepped on.
But his elegant legs moved quickly and surely—without a struggle, he manoeuvred through the tangled legs of shouting humans and made it to the centre of the fuss. Sitting on the ground was a massive crystal ball. This is what you were all fighting over? He thought, but then—
He saw himself. His old human self, no feline features—just a boy, lying there, asleep. Grass surrounding him, a masculine hand coming to caress his face.
“Where am I?” Matthias’s cat-self asked nobody in particular.
“At the end of your life,” someone replied. “But don’t worry.”
“What? You just said I died!"
“Maybe there’s still something you need to do,” the voice said smoothly, avoiding his question completely, and Matthias the Cat flicked his tail in annoyance. “Don’t be like that. Shall we?”
____
Matthias opened his eyes. He was laying in a patch of grass, staring up into Franny’s teary, thankful eyes, and even though he was sure he could still feel whiskers and fur on his face, Franny had both his hands cupping it like it was the most precious thing in the world.
Life has been restored, he heard from somewhere in his fogged-up brain. His neck hurt like hell. Eight lives left.