FSE

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I could almost hear Harry, in the back of my mind, helpfully explaining that sleeping with the light on was bound to worsen my condition, and of course my fingers were swollen from exertion – circulation in the extremities was frequently affected by stress.

It was more than odd. I shook hands with my superiors, my team members, and members of HR and accounting. I passed off my hard drive and the people who took it from me tilted their heads for just a brief moment at the hairs on it before brushing them off and asking whether I had a pet, to which I of course answered yes, a pet rat. No one seemed to notice or care that I was gradually transforming into a monster.

Ultimately, that was convenient, because I already could barely grasp what was going on. Not because it was complicated, but because I was grinding my teeth trying to figure out why the change had escalated. It seemed ludicrous to ask what had started it, because it was impossible and stupid. Long term, we figured out how the universe started, but short term, we're just trying to put together all the rules. The most obvious answer was my emotional distress from the previous night, although that was also a frustrating conclusion, because it meant that whatever this was, it wasn't solved by distraction or determination. Making myself go to work, meeting people, and setting up my new office space hadn't changed a single thing. If anything, the only reason I'd convinced myself to even leave the apartment was Harry.

The man with the stag's head went around everyday life without acknowledging that anything was out of the ordinary. If he could do that, I could deal with a racoon mask and some weird fingers. I didn't want to. But I could.

The whole week passed that way. Wake up, feed Mufasa, check emails, make coffee, feed the poltergeist and myself, leave for work. I would complain about the cost in food, but even if my salary hadn't been more than capable of sustaining it, the feast my fellow tenant had purchased for me was shelf stable for the most part and contributed the entirety of the week's meals, including a number of distressingly insipid salads. Not insipid from bad ingredients, I'm sure – but who makes a salad for themselves? Do people do that? I don't do that. But if I threw in enough nuts and cheese, they were at least proteinaceous.

This brought me to my second session with the therapist. Rather than an address, Lori had emailed me GPS coordinates that I had initially assumed were some kind of joke: they were the coordinates for my apartment. Remarkably specific ones, along with a firm instruction to leave my living room blinds open. I was bemused, but not amused, by her jovial suggestion that I might enjoy the puzzle of GPS more than the drudgery of looking up an address. Not only was it insultingly not a puzzle, but also by this point, my various paranormal experiences had prepared me to get in a cab and have the driver tell me the location didn't exist or had burned down, but then drop me off there anyway like some kind of sleeper agent.

Irritated and munching on Gourmet Exotic Nut Mix With Chili Honey, I sat in my living room and waited. It was frustrating to try to comb candied crumbs out of my hand fur with my teeth, but at least my incisors were marginally sharper as of the past day or two and thus better at the job. It got to be five past the hour, so I checked my phone for emails or texts. Nothing. And half the nut mix was gone because I was losing my damned mind, and it was ten minutes past the hour. Finally, I got an email from Lori.

“Where are you? Has something come up? If you need to cancel, in the future please do so within 24 hours."

Bewilderment. I rechecked her earlier email. There was nothing there but the GPS coordinates. Eight decimal points' worth of them. An absurd precision. I rubbed at my eyes. She couldn't be serious. Using a map app, I zoomed in on the exact point and with a little spatial awareness and a lot of grumbling, I walked to my window. She wanted me to go to my window and had insisted on my leaving it open.

“Oh! There you are!"

I yelped and jumped backwards. There was a muffled sound of confusion. Cautiously, I stepped forward again.

“And, welcome back," a voice said cheerily as soon as I was in place. The window was set deep into the wall with a little display shelf in front of it and in the resulting alcove, it was difficult to tell exactly from where the voice originated. I looked out the window and down to the street. No one there except a few kids playing catch, and neither did what I expected, which was to look up at me soullessly or something, so it wasn't them.

“Um, hi," I answered warily. “Is this… This is Lori, right?"

“It sure is." She started a few standard therapist things – assessing my feelings, calling me by name a bunch, and finally asking if I had anything specific to bring up – but I interrupted.

“Where are you? I can't see you."

“Right inside," she answered placidly. “Right now, since there's no one with you, I suppose this is okay, but I really would prefer if you came inside. I think we would both be more comfortable." I remembered that calling Lori last week had involved drawing a picture of a plant onto my phone screen instead of dialing a number. I looked down at my bromeliad, sitting where it had for the past week in the tiny alcove.

“Lori, there's a lot going on in my life right now, and I need you to tell me, out loud, that you're talking to me through my plant." Suddenly suspicious of being bugged, I poked at the leaves to look for any hint of electronics. Someone must have broken in. Maybe the same person who was gifting me the gourmet food and the ruby in my necklace had planted mics and speakers.

Maybe Lori was the plant, for all I knew.

It would be the first confirmation from anyone that anything out of the ordinary was happening. If anyone had a responsibility to confront me with my delusion, it was a therapist. If she was standing in my room as a normal person and I was facing away from her and talking to her reflection, it was her job to tell me that. If I was trussed up in a straitjacket in a padded room, it was her job to tell me that, too.

When she didn't respond after a few moments, I looked back up. There was a sense of vertigo from staring out over the street while leaning slightly on the shelf. A faint reflection in the window snagged my attention and I realized it was the translucent image of someone over my shoulder. I stared. I turned.

I was in an office.

Lori was a tall woman whose long hair had been delicately dyed to capture the idea of a birds of paradise flower. Her skin was ebony and shone in the natural lighting of the room as though polished. Her eyes were like plum blossoms, and that was really all I could understand of them. If her irises had simply been the color of plum blossoms, I would say that, just like I would say if Harry had been wearing a stag head mask, rather than having a stag's head.

Lori spoke carefully. Her voice was smooth, similar to Harry's in tonality, but higher pitched by an octave or so. “Welcome again," she greeted me. She inclined her head slightly. I couldn't help but think of willows. Feeling shaky, I helped myself to a seat on a mahogany-colored couch. Or maybe it was mahogany. It was remarkably cushiony, for mahogany. I turned and looked back at the door. There was no doorknob on the pristine white interior, but there was a shelf that in other contexts would have been quite cute, and on that shelf was my bromeliad.

She smiled when I sat and took a seat of her own. Her chair was beechwood – again, I would say off-white, or fawn, or tan, but it was beechwood – and arranged at ninety degrees from the couch so that we could face one another comfortably but weren't forced to. “Today," she started, “I'd like to talk about-“

“No, no, wait," I interrupted. She paused politely, taking it in stride. “Where am I? Where are we? I was in my apartment ten seconds ago. Now I'm…" I gestured aimlessly around the room and all its wooden furniture, potted plants, hanging epiphytes, and quietly humming electric humidifiers. “Here."

Lori picked up a pad of paper and pen from next to her, nodding. “You mentioned you had been losing time." Her words were gently precise; softly clipped; lightly intoned. If I hadn't been near panicked again, they would have been entrancing. “That is concerning in any circumstances, but especially during travel-“

“Even you?" I asked, pained. Why wasn't anyone taking this seriously? Something was wrong. Not just with me, but with this place. With the world.

She coaxed me with my name. “I understand. Transitions are difficult and can bring to light complex aspects of ourselves that had hidden within places of comfort."

I sagged.

Anyway, we talked. I'm not really qualified to talk about therapy in any professional terms, but for the next half-hour, despite her refusal to address the fact I had teleported and that she was quite obviously a dryad, we nailed down specific topics to cover and a strategy for addressing them. She liked my idea to decorate my office with things from home. She cautiously approved of my expressed intent to enter the dating scene. She firmly endorsed keeping a journal of each instance of lost time, as well as sleep patterns.

Before we wrapped up, she said, with a hint of apology, “I do not mean to imply that you have been intentionally dishonest, but I would like to ask you a few of the intake questions again, now that we have had some time to get a bit more comfortable. Is that alright?"

I nodded, immediately wary. I started to clasp my hands. It reminded me they were monstrous. I laid them on my legs instead.

“Have you ever felt the urge to harm yourself or others, or made plans to do so?"

I thought about crashing the serving platter into my mirror, trying to destroy the image that lived with me. I shook my head no.

“Have you ever had problems with substance abuse, or become angry when someone asked you about your use of drugs or alcohol?"

I thought about the disappearance of all my beer without explanation, especially in the context of my lost time. I shook my head no.

“Have you ever heard voices when no one was around, as clearly as you hear mine right now, or seen people or things that couldn't possibly be there?"

I glared at her. My hands got tight on my thighs. I felt sharp pinpricks and looked down. Claws. My face itched. My voice came out through my teeth. I had lied during the phone call. I couldn't now. “A lot."

She took a deep breath while continuing to watch me. Despite myself, I took it with her. A lot of what we had decided on had been breathing techniques. I could at least do that in good faith, even if she wasn't acting in good faith with me. “Does your family have a history of psychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia?" Perfectly calm. Clinical, but warm. Determined, but patient.

I shook my head.

She took another deep breath, in and out. I mirrored it. “Hallucinations such as these can indicate serious conditions. As a psychiatrist, I can prescribe certain medications; however, I would like to understand better before doing so. I understand why you did not initially come forward with this, but it is critical that we be able to trust one another." It was the gentlest chastisement I had ever heard. My ears burned. I grimaced and nodded.

We finished with an exchange of reassurances: I was getting along well enough at work and at home that we could wait a week before the next session, and she had worked successfully with several clients experiencing such problems. It became clear that I was being dismissed, so I stood, shook Lori's hand when she offered hers, thanked her, walked across carpet that could only be moss, and gamely reached for my bromeliad as though it were a doorknob. Doing so took another deep breath and grim determination, but I looked down at the plant, looked back up, and found myself staring out of my window in my apartment.

Manuel was doing fine after his emergency the prior weekend. He was still a little wary of any food he hadn't personally prepared or watched being prepared, which is completely understandable for the days following food poisoning, so I didn't press about charcuterie. The information that he wouldn't be coming down to share it was even offered free of charge or obligation, because people with his (and Maria's) level of social acuity can do things like that.

I didn't like going upstairs to check on him. I didn't want either one of them to see how bad I'd gotten. Soot-black fur had expanded from rings around my eyes to coat my cheeks but hadn't reached my chin. Streaks of it ran up my forearms like vasculature. Nothing else was visible, though I had developed the habit of checking my ass in the mirror each morning to make sure none of the fuzz collecting around my nether regions was coalescing into a tail. So far, nothing, thank the skies.

On Monday, I worked from home, which many of you may recognize as code for “played hookie for my mental health because no office gives mental health days." One week into the job, it maybe wasn't a great idea, but on waking, I'd found tufts of both white and black fur sprouting from behind my ears. It was invisible within my storm cloud of a hairdo, but I could feel it there, and it made me tuck myself into a tiny ball with my cell phone for an hour and a half, which at the time seemed at least slightly indicative of its being a bad day to go to work. In an effort to leave my home and enjoy something simple, I wandered until I came across a coffee shop. In a city, it's like following a river to get out of the woods: follow literally any road, and you'll find a coffee shop.

This one was “Probably Coffee (But Also Tea)." It had that sense of convivial anarchism that came with deeply cared for, expensive brews from ethically sourced beans. A chalkboard advertised different blends of coffee and tea together between strips of studded leather. An aesthetic theme of pastels, steel, and slate made the place seem like the physically heaviest possible version of a playground. I felt like my ruby-tipped shark tooth needed a spritz of chrome just to fit in.

“Cera (they/them)" brandished their nametag on their collar and shot me a wide grin with too many incisors. They held the heels of their palms on the counter and leaned slightly forward, such that their posture was as completely open and welcoming as it could possibly be. Like the entire establishment, they wore wildflower colors as ornaments in hair and on wrists with a black tank top and black leather jacket. They were taller than me, but who wasn't, but no one else had made me feel so thoroughly like prey. “How you doin', sweetheart?" they asked.

I felt a rush of warmth contest the discomfort from that wolfish gaze. I tried not to be obvious in the way I counted their teeth. Instead, I smiled in response and ordered a “GUNS," which meant Green tea, yUzu, and Northern Sumatran. It was all quite insane and it was being served to me by someone who had too many teeth and the back hem of whose jacket swung back and forth too late, as though there was something underneath it.

“You like the tail?" Cera asked. They had caught me trying to steal a glance. They shimmied their hips and lifted a silver fox tail that had been clipped to their belt loop. The other customers took it in stride.

Ah. A furry.

“Just, caught my eye is all."

They kept about their business of brewing and mixing and searching for yuzu. “Faux fur, I swear. It's weird, but it just feels so natural, y'know? And if it feels right, you do it. Right? You gotta be you."

Some people made earnest philosophy sound like casual conversation. “Heh, um, yeah," I tried to agree. It was hard to. My hands were coated in black fur where they rested openly on the countertop. I hid them behind it.

Cera grinned again. Too many teeth, and too sharp. “Takes some getting used to for everyone else, though. The teeth, too." They tapped one with a fingernail. Tok tok. Plastic. “Here's your GUNS." They shouted it and the other barista and one of the other patrons shouted it after them like a toast. “Six dollars even. Want a punch card?"

I paid and tipped and got a punch card. “Thanks."

“Thanks, sweetie. First time seeing a wolf in person?" They smirked and fixed me with an ice-blue stare far removed from the Southern summer warmth of their voice.

I blanched. The sick irony of the question turned my stomach. Already unsure what was real and what was prosthetics. Already off balance. Already living with a hungry, haunted wolf who wouldn't leave my home. “No."

My answer landed flat and killed the fun. Thankfully, Cera was used to it. “Just a little tease. Enjoy your GUNS!" (“GUNS!")

As I left, I bumped against another patron on her way in. She stumbled backwards and almost lost her sun hat. I reached out to grab her to steady her so that her other hand could successfully grab her hat. I surprised myself with how easy it was to hold her up and the fact I hadn't been the one knocked away. I was used to weighing considerably less than most teenagers.

She saw my hand and screamed. Everyone looked, but she saw. She stopped herself. Time froze. She looked. She saw. She looked at my face. She saw. She steadied herself. She saw me. She screamed again, but quieter and shorter – the kind of scream when you don't understand why you need to, but the animal inside you does.

I snorted out a laugh. It wasn't a derisive laugh, but it convulsed through me in the face of her terror. Another half laugh, half bark tore out of my throat and body. I let her go. I stepped outside and laughed again. She had seen. Anyone had seen. I laughed again like a hiccup, and then one more time like a sob. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes, but I wasn't sobbing. It was something else. She had seen. Everything was getting blurry.

Yuzu in green tea and coffee was really damn weird, but I kinda liked it.

As I mentioned, I fully intended to enter the dating scene in the local area, even though the local area had considerable overlap with my previous local area, so I did. It felt weird. A lot of people in my position might say, “How dare I inflict myself on other people?" but what a stupid thing to think. You can't make that decision for other people. If they see you as weight and don't have the self-respect to drop you, that's on them. Not only that, but also, caring for others is said to be one of the better ways of learning to care for oneself. It was utility dating, really. I had a skill to learn, plenty of time, and a paycheck I didn't really deserve; why not meet new people?

So, I set up a profile on Why The Hell Not?, the newest, hottest app, especially for people who didn't believe in themselves. It involved taking a selfie, and somewhat to my surprise, the fur didn't show up. Are there furry vampires? Like, the monster part of me couldn't be photographed, but the rest of me still could? If so, are there enough silver and other pure metals in a smartphone camera to reject capturing something unholy? These, these are questions for philosophers, and that is certainly not what I am.

My first date was with a kind gentleman named Gerrard. Gerrard wanted to have sex with someone who was much shorter and smaller and younger than he was. Gerrard was rapidly informed he would not acquire sex with someone like that, and so he blushed bright red, apologized profusely, and did not ask about a second date. He really was a great guy, I'm pretty sure, and I did want to have some sex, but not with Gerrard.

My second date was with a quiet nonbinary named Bailey. Bailey was profusely awkward, very sweet, and not good at anything. Aggressively not good at anything. Insistently not good at anything. I don't think I've admitted to expertise in any skill except piano and certain types of software, but I have admitted those skills and do to anyone who asks. Bailey had no skills, also apologized, and also did not follow up about a second date.

My third date, which was scheduled for the afternoon before my next therapy appointment, was with a woman named El.

“I need to start this date by apologizing," she said as we sat down to lunch by a public fountain. Crows had gathered on it and were probably not staring at me, but as I mentioned, everything was a little blurry by then.

“Please don't," I said. Was it something about my manners? Was I rude? Did I have the most ineffable resting bitch face? It had made sense for Gerrard to apologize. It had sort of made sense for Bailey to apologize, but only because they were that kind of person. El had only just met me (aside from our emoji-centric introductions on WtHN) and was already apologizing. I felt a light, but real, wave of panic ripple from my toes to my increasingly fluffy ears.

“You don't recognize me."

I squinted up at her. Even seated, she was an inch or so taller than I. It was bright out, but we had an umbrella at the table. It dawned on me that she should have been wearing a sunhat. “Oh, it's um."

“The lady who screamed at you in Probably Coffee a week ago, yes." She held herself together quite well as she confessed to having screamed at a stranger in broad daylight.

I tried to joke. “I can be very intimidating."

It didn't land. She gave me a once-over. “I think you're joking, but I'm not sure why. Do you… know what you look like? I recognized you on the app even without all of… this." She gestured broadly at my face.

I took a deep breath. I let it out.

El filled the silence. “People get to be whoever they want to be, so, you know, do that. This was more than I was expecting, I guess. Even knowing Cera. The, uh, barista."

“The one with too many teeth," I answered while staring at nothing. This was very poor date behavior from both of us.

“That prosthetic freaks me the hell out," El confirmed. “You know they cemented it in? What did you do to get the, uh. The fur? And are those gloves?"

“You can see this?"

“Of course I can," she answered matter-of-factly. “Everyone can. Most people just don't make it their business to police people to their standards. I…" She frowned at herself and put her caramel-colored face in her hands. Her brown, delicately slanted eyes looked down at the table between us. “I'm not sure. It's on the weird end of the spectrum, but I…" She creased her brow one step further, and then, having found her face at maximum crinklage, shook her head. “I got scared, and then I screamed at you, and I'm sorry for that."

El could see everything that was happening to me. She insisted everyone else could, too, but that simply wasn't true. She could see, and was making the choice to tell me that she could, but wouldn't acknowledge it if I didn't want her to. That was very kind and very anxiety-inducing.

“Don't be. I don't look like this on purpose."

“Is it the whole furry thing, like Cera?"

“No, it's-“

“Y'know what?" She flashed a broad smile. “I've made things too awkward. We can talk about this if there's a second date. Deal?"

I found myself smiling reflexively back. It didn't stuff the panic away, but it melted some fraction of it and made it manageable. El greeted the waiter when they came by. They darted one barely noticeable doubletake at me. El and I exchanged glances when they did. We ordered some sweet potato fries with pepper aioli and chives to share. She got a lamb burger with an egg on it – stupendously brave for a first date – whereas I had made a safe choice of a club sandwich.

We had a good date. I told her about my work with Computer Tech Company (“CTC? My sister-in-law works there.") as far as I was legally allowed to and she told me she was in dental school. Her eyes would now and then move to my hands. I kept them meticulously clean, even going so far as to eat the fries and the remains of my sandwich with a fork. She opened her mouth once to comment that I could totally use my hands if I wanted to and it wouldn't bother her, but she didn't actually say all of those words and instead remembered she had agreed not to bring anything up about them until a second date. I don't like to think about my laugh, but her laugh was nice and burbly like a small mountain waterfall. Her humor was sardonic and seemed somehow both lighter and harsher than mine. It's more important that we both had the chance to engage with humor, which was a relief for me at minimum and clearly a joy to her.

Anyway, lunch was over. The crows were still on the statues in the public fountain nearby, playing with the occasional errant child. We commented on the crows and on how good the food had been and on the weather. An awful question shot putted its way out of my mouth before I realized it had been doing that twisty windup shot putters do.

“Want to get ice cream?"

El smiled. It made her whole face soften and look faintly sad, like a recognition that smiles were treasured in an increasingly fraught and frenetic world. It felt authentic. It wasn't defeatist or gloomy. It was aware, gentle, grateful. “Sure. Gelato is Better Than Ice Cream?"

“Uh."

“The store. It's a block away."

“Oh!"

We paid and went to GiBTIC, where we each got an affogato. This time, as a show of trust, I was less cautious. I got whipped cream on my ube gelato. She got caramel on her pistachio gelato. We sat near the crows and public statues – mostly of dead people, but some of animals – to eat. Some of the whipped cream caught in my facial fur. It wasn't quite possible to remove.

“I'll wash it out later," I said.

“Does it go in the washing machine?" she asked.

“It doesn't come off," I explained.

“Ever? Is it, like, grafted on?"

“No."

She gave me a hard stare. “Lying isn't going to get you another date."

I thought about responses and chose two: First, a gentle but firm sneer, because she had called me a liar. Second, I rolled up the sleeves of my long-sleeved tee. She watched as I revealed the spidery, vein-like streaks of fur that by now reached nearly to my shoulders, but still showed plenty of natural skin amidst them. I took a deep breath and said, “Touch it."

Maybe other people nearby thought I was showing off muscles. In truth, there was far more tone there than I had realized. Regardless, she reached out her hand and touched me. She withdrew it. She put it back. She stroked the area to explore the changes in sensation from surface to surface. “What…"

“I don't know."

She sat back again. I put the sleeve back as it had been. A gust of wind snagged her sunhat, so I caught it and put it back in her lap. El offered me a taste of her affogato. A crow landed on my shoulder to steal a taste of mine.

It was getting into the afternoon and I needed to go have therapy by walking through a plant in my living room, so we parted ways, but before we did, she offered a hug. It was strong.