Title: The Unusual Story of Mr. A. Anglewright Part: 1 of 1 Keywords: furry, nosex, cubs, violence Universe: unsorted Author: just_lurking Summary: A story about demons who walk the earth, kidnapping boring accountants and their equally average families. Written for Halloween 2008. Hello dear reader. It’s your semi-omniscient author again. I was floating though the multiverse, looking for a story as always, when I came upon a world I’d never visited before. I drifted down towards it, and manifested myself. I found myself inside a busy, city police station, which I though would an ideal place to hunt for stories. Fortunately no one noticed me as I materialised. I took a seat near the front desk, where I could, without being too conspicuous, observe the inhabitants of this world as they went about their business. I didn’t have to wait long before a rather excited looking red fox ran into the station, and up to the front desk. He had a rather interesting story to tell, which I will relate to you exactly as I heard it. Unfortunately, the officers at the desk were behind a sheet of bullet proof glass, and spoke through speakers. I was too far away to hear clearly what the officer said, so I am unable to report on his speech, but I think the story is interesting enough even without it. ~~ The unusual story of Mr A. Anglewright ~~ Good evening officer. I would like to report a crime. […] Well I’m not exactly sure which crime, it’s a bit of an unusual story. You see my fam… […] It’s Anglewright Mr Andrew Anglewright. I’m an accountant with first national. Look, about this crime. My family and I were heading back home to Azureville after visiting some friends of ours who live here in Cobalt City. You know Azureville? It’s about twenty miles north west of here. Anyway the most direct route out of the city is the N857. So we got on at junction twelve. You can see where I’m going with this, right? We were only passing through the junction twelve neighbourhood. We would have been onto the motorway in less than a minute, if our car hadn’t decided to pick that moment to break down in. I don’t mind telling you that I was worried. I mean a spotless, red, five-door people-carrier in the middle of a bad neighbourhood stands out like a sore thumb. I was worried for my wife and my boys. It was odd though. The car didn’t show any indication that it was about to break down. It’s less than a year old and it just sailed through its MOT last month. It didn’t even cough or splutter before it broke down. One moment we were doing thirty. The next it’s like the engine was just wasn’t there any more, because we’re coasting. I got the car more or less over to the side and park it. I should have put on the hazards, but I was worried that would bring the locals down on us. So we’re in the car, and well…tensions are running a little bit high. Me and Sandy (that’s my wife) know the situation we’re in. I’ve called the mechanic on my mobile, and he’s on the way. So there’s nothing to do except lock the doors and sit tight. Of course, Dave and Matt don’t like that one bit. You know how kids can be. They’re tired, and bored, and they’re picking up on our fear. So things are pretty tense. It’s about that time that a freak fox in a stained vest and gang colours jumps on the hood of our car, leering at us through the windscreen, and he brought his friends. They came from nowhere—about a dozen of them—all species, all male and all dangerous looking. We huddled in the car. Thinking it would give us some safety, but they opened the doors like they weren’t locked—by the handles I mean. They just opened the doors calmly, like any civilised furson would, totally ignoring the door locks. They dragged us out of the car and into a derelict house just a few feet from us, on the side we had parked. That’s how they crept up on us. We’d rolled to a stop right outside their headquarters. They manhandle us inside—jeering at us. They were none too gentle, either. We tried to resist, of course, but not too much—they all had sabres strapped on their belts. I remember thinking that it was an odd choice of weapon for gangsters—I mean, surely guns would be a better choice. Hell, I don’t think I’ve even seen a sabre outside of a museum before, but a weapon is a weapon, and I didn’t want them using it on my family. So they take us inside, kicking and screaming, and they dump us in this room. It’s a big, windowless, oblong room. There’s only one way in and out, and our kidnappers are between us and it. They seem to have decorated the room. Dirty red rags—I think they were bed sheets before they were ripped up—hang on the walls, and there’s a sort of altar or shrine at the back of the room. It was covered in a mess of evil looking things: garlands of withered flowers, flickering wax candles, little dishes with offerings of rancid meat in them, occult statuettes. It looked (and smelt) disgusting. We just sort of scooted back until we were in the rear, right corner of the room. The boys at the back, my wife in front of them, and me in front of her. The shrine was to our left, and our captors where in front of us. They just sort of stood there staring at us, expectantly, hungrily. I was just about to step forward and ask them what they thought they were doing with us, when they parted and their leader came into the room. He was a equine, seven foot tall, with black bat wings! […] I’m not making this up! At first I thought he had grey fur, but as he approached I saw that he was actually furless, and it was his skin that was grey. His flesh was like putty. It was rubbery looking, and it just sort of hung off his bones. It was really strange, he looked really sick and really strong at the same time. He had really deep set eyes with the heaviest bags under them I’ve ever seen, but he also had rippling muscles and there was a sense of confidence and power in the way he walked. Anyway, he’s there and he’s sizing us up—like we’re livestock or something—and I figure, “what the heck.” So I step forward and demand that he let us go. Well, he just looks at me as if I asked him for directions to the moon, then he bursts out laughing, and all his men laugh along with him. He says we’re not leaving this room alive, and that “the meat should know it’s place and be silent.” Well, I’m feeling really worried now. Not only has my family been kidnapped, but apparently we’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of psychotic, cannibalistic cultists lead by a freak of nature. I do the only thing I can think of in this situation, I try and make the ultimate sacrifice for my family. I beg them to do what they like with me, but to let my family go. I mean, really break down and plead with them to let them go—tears and everything—but it falls on deaf ears. Hell, I think they actually found it amusing, watching a grown man beg on his knees. Well the horse picks me up with one chubby hand, and looks me straight in the eye. He explained that his masters fed off of souls filled with grief, remorse, fear and despair, and that he and his ‘boys’ were granted a measure of immortality in exchange for each tribute of corrupted souls they ‘harvested’—so, no, he wouldn’t be letting any of us go. Then he throws me back into our corner. I collide with my wife, and, while I’m stunned, the equine grabs little Mattie and says he’s first. My boy…he’s only eleven… Sorry… It’s hard to even contemplate. I make a lunge for Matt, and try to scratch up the beast’s arm with my claws, but he just laughs at me and swats me away. He says terrible things about how our children are still so innocent, and that he’s going to rip that innocence from them, and that he’s going to let us watch, and then, when he’s done with my children and my wife, he’s going to kill them one at a time in front of me, and then, and only then, will he kill me. It’s more than a man can stand, more than anyone could stand. And while he’s talking he’s forced my son down on his hands and knees, in front of the altar, and pulled down his pants. There are tears in my boy’s eyes, and I don’t want to look, but at the same time I can’t look away because the eye contact is the only thing I can give my son at this point. Behind me my wife is holding Davie tightly, as she rocks back and forwards whispering “No, no, no…” over and over. I feel like an utter failure as a parent. The monster reaches for the fly of his trousers, and I feel like I’m about to be sick, but then we hear this ‘ah-hem’ from across the room. Well, all heads in the room whip round towards the door, and standing there is this raccoon in a trench coat. He’s twenty-something looking, medium-tall, got all the classic ’coon features: mask, tail rings, spindly fingers, lithe frame. There something about his face—maybe the way it creases—which suggests he doesn’t laugh a lot. Not that he seems cruel—just the opposite, he seems to give off this aura of fairness—but it’s a cold expression—like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he can’t afford to laugh. He walks into the room, and the ruffians part for him—like they’re afraid to touch him or something. Everybody seems to have forgotten about little Mattie. I grab him and pull up his pants, pressing him into my wife’s arms. The horse doesn’t react, he isn’t paying any attention to us any more, the raccoon has his full attention. The horse stands up and speaks to the ’coon. “Well, well. Fancy that. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.” He says. There’s contempt in his voice. “The feeling’s mutual. I thought you were dead, why aren’t you?” The ’coon says. He’s got a really educated voice. Anyway, the horse brushes off the question with a non-answer, and the ’coon rushes him. A moment later there is a gash across the horse’s torso, and blood and gut leaking from the wound. The raccoon has a sword held high, as if he’s just swung it, and I realise that’s because he has. He obviously had that sword on underneath his coat all the time. I don’t know what it is with these people and their antiquated weapons, but if he offs our captor then I’m not complaining. There’s a moment of stillness, then the horse laughs again. I thought he really must have been stark raving to laugh at that cut, but then I see why he’s laughing. The horse’s torso is stitching itself back together. It’s pulling the guts back in and fusing the wound closed. There was an oily black smoke drifting from his injury as it healed. […] I’m deadly serious. And another thing; his blood—when the ’coon cut him open—it wasn’t like yours or mine. It was thick gooey stuff, and there wasn’t much of it—like he didn’t have much in him in the first place. I tell you this horse was a demon or something. Anyway, he heals himself up, and there isn’t so much as a scratch left when he’s done, and then he snaps his fingers and his gang attack the ’coon en mass. Well, the ’coon has better luck with them than he did with the horse. He disarms the front row almost instantly. The sabres go flying towards the horse, who dodges them easily. They land blade-up in the wooden floor. Thunk, thunk, thunk, like. One swipe of the sword and five ruffians go down. The second wave had time to circle round though, and they’ve got the ’coon in the middle of them. They close the circle and attack him again. Well, the ’coon doesn’t even bat an eyelid—he looks cool and collected. He blocks all their attacks, even the ones from behind him—like he knows in advance when they’re about to swing at him—then he takes out the three directly in front of him, and steps forward out of the circle. There’s only four ruffians left now, and none of them wants to attack the ’coon any more. The raccoon steps over the dead bodies and delivers his ultimatum: “Surrender or die.” He says. Well the horse just laughs again. “You can’t kill me. I am immortal!” He replies. The ’coon just shakes his head sadly and says “Perhaps not, but look around you.” He gestures to the floor as he speaks. The horse stops laughing and looks at the ground. It’s about then that I realise that the swords embedded in the floor are making a ring about the horse. Five of them—a pentagon. The horse seemed to realise at about the same time as I did, but it obviously meant more to him than it did to me because, for the first time, there was fear on his face—real, mortal fear. He looked up, just in time to see the ’coon rushing him again. The ’coon planted one hand on the horse’s shoulder, and did a flip over him. Half way over the beast he lashed out with his sword, and sliced the equine’s ear. The ear fell to the ground with a wet plop, and the ’coon landed just outside the circle of swords. This is where things got really surreal. The ear sat there for a moment, then it caught fire, just like that. The fire didn’t spread, like it should have on wood. Instead it sort of balled up on itself, and came to life. Really, I swear, it was a tiny living flame. It scampered, like a mouse. I don’t know how, because it didn’t have feet, but it did, and it scampered straight for the nearest edge of the pentagon. The horse was also running for the edge, but the ear/flame thing made it first. When it hit the edge the whole pentagon caught alight. Then the floor inside the pentagon vanished, and a pit of flames, and screaming, and wailing opened up in its place. It was like a blast furnace. Soot and ash billowed from the hole. The horse was still trying to escape the pentagram. He was using his wings now. I didn’t think the were big enough to keep him afloat, but apparently they did, or perhaps the heat was helping him to stay in the air. Either way he was reaching desperately for the edge. It was a wasted effort though. A clawed hand, with five fingers each the size of a furson, reached out of the hole and grasped him—pulling him down into the pit. The horse screamed a terrible, unearthly scream as he was pulled down, then he was gone. I looked up at our saviour—the ’coon who could apparently open portals to hell. It was difficult, the hot ash glowed so brightly it hurt my eyes, but I squinted at him as best I could through the roaring heat. He was standing on the edge, peering down into the depths of the pit. The flames and smoke which billowed around him didn’t seem to bother him at all, but it was the smoke which allowed me to see it. […] The space behind his shoulders! The smoke was billowing around his body, but it was also billowing about something that wasn’t there behind him! There were a pair of wing-shaped spaces—bird wings, not bat—behind this guy, which the smoke couldn’t enter. […] Well I only had a moment to see it because the hole closed up a second later. The space inside the pentagon was burnt, but otherwise normal, wood again. The ’coon strode across it brandishing his sword, and the four remaining gang members just turned tail and ran. Then he asked me if I was okay and if I could get my family home. Well, I was so struck dumb by what had happened that I would have nodded if he’d asked me if I wanted to know what meat hot dogs are really made of. So he went off, and then it was just me and my family alone in this big room with seven dead furs at our feet. Well, we were all in shock for just a moment, but then I came to and half dragged my wife and kids back out to the car. We sat in there—huddled in the back seats, with the kids safely between us—until the mechanic arrived. Would you believe he thought I was overreacting when I said I didn’t want to get out of the car in this neighbourhood. Well, the mechanic fixed the car, and we paid him, and then I drove the car here, and that’s the story. What do you think? […] Yes, I know its an offence to waste police time. I’m serious. I’m not mad or making this up! For gods sakes! It really happened! I can prove… […] No, I can’t say that I want that. […] Ah, well, I’ll be on my way then, shall I? Uh, have a good evening officer.