1 : BlindSighted
Scilius emerged from the bed, wiping his leathery eyes as he arose and saw the clock on his bedside table. [6:58], time to wake up. Once he stood fully up, feeling unusually tired this morning, he began his typical routine and withdrew a set of clothes from his drawers, while scratching his arms. He pulled on a pair of pants around his legs and tail, clawing at a few scales as he did so, and threw on a shirt, tucking it into his pants. He sat on the side of his bed in order to put on his socks, but he stopped to think to himself, what day is it?
After a few moments of thought, he flopped backwards in disgust, it's Saturday. The navy-blue khakis and white buttoned school shirt he had tucked into them were meaningless. He just remembered himself staying up until a little after three last night playing his new copy of Battlefield. It was a good way to commemorate his weekend, but he didn't want his sleep to be interrupted like this. He always had trouble falling back to sleep, and he vaguely remembered remnants of a dream that he thought was interesting. Bits and pieces of memories dangled in his head, but nothing intelligible.
After abandoning the routine and laying back in his bed, he had almost begun to drift off into a familiar trance, before he felt a tingling that was on his chest this time.
Damn I'm itchy, what's up. He sat up, un-tucking his shirt so that he could scratch at a few of the scales on his chest. I didn't do anything wrong with the laundry, did I, he was trying to understand his affliction, did mom put too much detergent in? After considering it, he expelled that theory quickly; his mom wouldn't be so careless.
This sensation did seem familiar to him, though. It was irritating and very dry, searing deep between his scales. He tried to think of where he felt this before, or when. Three hours of sleep is not enough for lucid thoughts, so it took him a minute or two to process it. I think it was last year that I had something like this... It was awful because... wait, no!
He lunged off the bed onto his feet and switched on the light, knowing now exactly where he felt this before, but hoping that he would be wrong. While eying himself in a mirror, he looked for the tell-tale signs. The green scales around his thin and pointy snout and a white patch of scales forming on its way down the front of his neck all seemed normal. But, he noticed the redness forming around his lips and eyes, and some small patches of skin that were beginning to flake off.
Then, in his eyes, he saw what made him certain he'd felt this feeling before: a slight haze forming on the very edges of his cornea, which had not yet reached his pupils. "Damn it," he said out loud, feeling like the most unlucky lizard on the planet, "and on the weekend too." He looked solemnly at the video game box laying on the top of his computer's tower, opened only a mere seventeen hours ago.
He looked at himself, thinking about what was happening with a frown on his snout. He was shedding, for the first time this year. He hated shedding; he would have to deal with itchy scales, peeling skin, and worst of all, blurry vision. It was caused by the dead skin covering his body and eyes peeling away before the new layer has surfaced. It happens every year for him, and all reptiles, and there was nothing he could do to stop it, except to wait for it to be over.
He guessed that by school on Monday he would certainly be nearly blind, unable to see more than blurry figures around him. Everything he saw just turned into colorful splotches when he would shed. No, not even pretty psychedelic colors either, just darkish bland puddles of the electromagnetic spectrum. He imagined it's similar to how most furs might see if they don't wear their prescription glasses, except more itchy.
Worst of all, his classmates would be having a field day, teasing and torturing the now blind lizard. They would love the chance to make his life miserable. It's not fair for him, he can't do anything to stop them like this. He couldn't do much to stop them even if he could see, not with his more or less pathetic body. He turned away from his mirror, hitting the lights, and fell back into his bed to sulk.
And my mom doesn't help, he thought. Most of the few scales that went to his school would skip the week or two each year that they had to shed, freeing them from the grasps of the other furs, but Scilius' mother had never allowed her son such a pleasure. He was forced to attend each and every hour of his classes.
His mom was adamant about perfect attendance, shedding or not. It was too risky to take off school for a week, he'd miss so much. At least, that's what she always told him. Instead, she thought her makeshift solution to the problem was more than adequate: Anti-histamines and skin lotion.
That was all fine, it'd take the itch away, but he would still have to endure a bunch of annoying classmates and functional blindness until he was completely shed. He'd much rather stay at home with himself instead. Things were more peaceful when he was alone.
He tried to find some bright side to this situation. At least I'll have shiny scales after, he almost managed to form a grin. But he thought that his old set was just fine the way it was.
He couldn't blame his mom too much. She was always a perfectionist, which almost seemed to contrast from her typical cynicism. She finds the strangest things to obsess about, and likes to make fun of everything else.
His mom's words had echoed in his head, "You'll miss everything." Miss what? Boring classes and intolerable classmates? Every day most of the teachers just manage to turn their fifty minute time slots into hell, and the students only make it worse with their intolerable antics. He never believed his mom, whose words seemed so absurd to him. School was always just a waste of time, and so was trying to make friends.
"Scilius," his mother had called out from the other side of his door. Just let me sleep, I want to sleep, he thought, before reluctantly answering, "What?"
"What are your plans for today," she had asked him that almost every day on the weekend, "Don't have any." He didn't bother telling her about his shedding yet. It can wait until the afternoon.
"None at all, you're staying home?" she asked, almost sounding disappointed. "Nope," he sighed.
"There aren't any hot girls hiding in there with you, are there? Should I check?" she said, almost giggling through the door. Scilius didn't have too much humor to give to her, "No, there aren't - you don't." She brings up girls every five minutes, I'm certain.
"Alright," she trailed off, leaving her son to his thoughts as she went about her own business. Scilius didn't hear her; his mind had set off about something else. Hot girls in my room, that's funny, like any would bother.
He had thought about it a lot more than he'd like to admit, and had gotten himself into lots of grief over it. Every other female fur in his school, in his opinion, fell into at least one of two categories: Ones I don't like, and ones that don't like me. Most of them, he had noticed, seemed to fall into both. He learned to avoid them in general after his first few rejections. There weren't any after that.
It didn't help that word seem to spread like wildfire through the school, and there was a definite pecking order that would initiate. It had only taken a few weeks before he became labeled as a nerd. He still remembered waves of other furs whispering "Rejected" as they walked passed him, and multitudes of other jokes. From then on almost everyone seemed to laugh at him when they saw him. The ones who didn't tease him still weren't interested in risking their own self esteem to defend him.
He could get over it, though. He liked being alone, and shedding was the perfect time to do exactly that. He'll just avoid everyone, like he was used to doing, and everything would work out fine. Eventually, he'll get better at blending in to the background.
He threw a few covers back onto himself, ready to sleep the weekend away, like he and other lazy adolescents often did. This will be over, quick and easy, he hoped to himself. But after being in the bed for a few moments, He peeked an eye open for just a second to see the speckled ceiling above him, and at that point he was almost able to see a few of the individual specks, which were spread across the white ceiling erratically, blur together.
The mall was a very horrible place to look for comfort. He was on a bench, and around him hundreds of people were running past him. Some were going this way, others were going that way. Either way, they were making large amounts of noise. Chatter and conversation were radiating around the entire atrium of the mall. It was very loud, and Scilius was getting aggravated.
He tried to put his claws over his ears, but that did nothing. In fact, the crowd seemed to be getting louder, much louder. Their noise was more than conversation, it was sharp, jagged, and loud, invading his slit ears. He left from his spot on the bench to another, but there was still the horrific noise. He tried three other benches, but it wasn't any good. Anywhere there was people, there was the noise, and he couldn't stand it.
Finally, he ran, until he was outside the mall, in an alley formed by the corners of the square buildings. He was alone, no other furs in sight, and, sitting down, he felt the noise disappear. It was silent, and peaceful. It was empty, and calm. He could rest his back against the wall, and smile.
Until he woke up, consciousness stealing his pleasant dream from him. He looked at the clock again, [12:42]. This was as good a time as any to get up, he guessed. He got up from his comfortably warm bed, leaving the heater that was within it on, still scratching at his scales every so often. The heated bed was a new thing for him, which he rather liked, but he remembered it not being necessary. He smelled some sort of food radiating through the air. This was also as good a time as any to tell his mom about his shedding.
He walked out his room and down the hallway to the central living room, connected to the kitchen, the house itself only recently becoming familiar to him, where his mother, tail waving, was cooking something that smelled like tomato sauce. In a slight daze he waddled up to her side next to the stove.
"It'll be ready in a few minutes," she said still looking at the pot. "Do you have some of that itch stuff?" He was still clawing at his left fore-arm.
She turned to Scilius, a slightly shorter green lizard with brown eyes, which were darker than the reddish orange eyes she gave to her son. "Why, what's wrong?" Her tail stopped waving as she said so.
"I'm just shedding again," he said wearily, still rather tired. He looked at his arm which was turning red with his scratching. "Lem'me see," his mother looked closely into his eyes, which had become more glazed since he was asleep.
"Yeah, you're shedding alright." She reached up into the medicine cabinet to pull out a grocery store brand bottle of anti-histamines, handing her son two tablets. She went to pour him some water, but he had already eaten them when she handed him the glass.
"Feel better?" she asked as if they would work instantly. Scilius shook his head. "Maybe if I could skip school I would," he grinned at her with a better humor. "No."
"Come on. I won't be able to take notes anyway. I'm not gon'na miss anything." His mother glared at him wither her dark eyes. "No, you don't know that you won't." She told him in a tone that only sounded stern. "Something cool might happen," she smirked. Scilius immediately didn't believe what she said, resentfully, but didn't protest any further.
It was never necessary for her to force her son to do anything. Scilius would never blatantly disobey her. They both knew that. But he wanted to stay home more than anything. Before he could produce the courage to argue anymore, she turned the dial down on the stove. "It's ready," she handed him a plate from the cabinet.
He ate with her in front of the den's television for only a few minutes before deciding that he'd had enough of listening to his mother talk about work. He was already finished the tomato flavored chicken that he'd shoveled on his plate. She was really good at making fun of coworkers, he had noticed. Not complaining, of course, she wasn't that kind of creature. She did, however, find amusement in the faults of others. Nothing around her went unnoticed, and almost nothing went without some sort of humor added to it. Anyone was fair game to be mocked. It was probably the result of the cynicism she had developed through twelve years as a single mother, who - until recently - worked at a fledgling law firm.
She called out to him before he could flee, "wait," he turned to look at her. "You're really not doing anything this weekend?" He just shrugged, "sleep."
"You ought to be doing something with your friends, or at least doing something outside for once." She was talking with sincere concern. "No one to hang out with," he shrugged again. She knew what he had meant.
She looked at him disappointed. "No one at all?" He felt a bit embarrassed at her prying; he never did like others feeling sorry for him, even his mother. "It's only been, like, one quarter." He didn't want to say that he wasn't trying, and he definitely didn't want to think about the times he had tried.
"Try to make some friends, please." His mother had been trying to encourage him to be more outgoing for a long time. She looked at him passively, like she thought it was her own fault that her son was spending his weekends alone.
"Fine," he turned back, knowing he had just said what she wanted to hear, but he was pretty sure that the smile returned to her face with his affirmation. He was almost ready to abandon the living room before his mother added, "And, really great report card." He looked back at her once more, "I'm really proud of you." He only smiled before walking away. He tossed his plate into the sink without rinsing it and returned to his bed. The mixture of his mom's praise and derision still churning in his head.
Not able to fall back to sleep and not willing to do anything else, his video game taunting him and his slowly blurring eyes, he turned on the television by his desk. His mom had been watching crime dramas, which were okay, but he would rather the channel he had remembered begging her to add to their cable plan: Channel 116, Science and Discovery. There was some program about the origin of the moon playing, to which he closed his eyes and listened. He stayed on that channel and in his heated bed for the rest of his weekend, only leaving for food and the bathroom.