User:Feathertail/Magic Can Happen

Magic Can Happen

Author: Jared Spurbeck

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It was 12:00 AM on a Friday night, and if you stopped outside a white house in the country you could hear a guitar singing. “Magic” Mark Duncan was playing, his sixteen-year-old hands already callused and comfortable with the strings. And he wasn't playing from memory either, but was lost in his own endless world.

He was all black jeans and metal band t-shirt, loose and way too big for him, with hair that touched his shoulders and got in his eyes and his face. He paused for a second and leaned back in his chair, stretching, and it spilled out onto the computer keyboard behind him. Then he sat back up, shook his head real fast to clear it, and got back to hearing this world that he's in. His amp was plugged into the PC, and he strummed each chord into Audacity, recording his explorations for the rest of the world to see.

Feet brushed against cards and discarded clothes. Elbow nudged his top hat, upended right next to his keyboard. It was why his friends gave him the nickname. Sometimes he pretended to pull things out of it, and sometimes he actually did. But tonight, his friends were all on dates with each other, and he was stuck here playing the-

Blues? Forget those. Symphonic metal, soul-wrenching lows and soaring heights of dreaming and fantasy, reminding him that magic can happen. Distracting him, delaying discouragement, until he forgot it was there to begin with and was wrapped up in where the music could take him.

By the time he flopped down on his sheets, next to guitar magazines and sweatpants, he remembered nothing but music. The magical world was still with him, and as the GNOME desktop faded his PC's screen into black, he knew that magic could happen.

Magic can happen ...

* * *

He felt dead when he woke up. His body was completely limp, no energy left in it at all, and he wanted to fall back asleep before it persuaded him to get up anyway. What had gotten him up to begin with?

“Mark!” His sister pounded on the door again. “Mark, it's 11:30 already. Get up so I can take you to get your hair cut.”

His hair ... he didn't want his hair cut. Sadly, his parents had scheduled it, and his sis wouldn't let him sleep through it. She didn't like that it was longer than hers.

He shifted around, trying to reach up and feel it, and something tugged at his behind. But he didn't notice, because he was staring at his hands all of a sudden. They were wrinkled and gnarled, and he thought “How long was I playing guitar last night?” Then he blinked, and cleared his eyes, and saw something else in the light of the window above his bed. Something very Not Right.

He jumped up and leaned up against the windowsill, looking not at the garage but at his arms. They were covered in gray fur all the way down to his hands, and wrinkled unnaturally at the fingertips. They didn't feel hurt or stiff. But claws curled out of his fingertips as he flexed his hands, and he stared at them.

A cat's face stared back at him from the window, with green eyes and long, black hair. And his heart leaped into his feline throat and got stuck there.

“Mark! Come on, wake up!”

More pounding on the door. He tried to say something, but it came out as complete gibberish. The shape of his mouth was all wrong.

“Mark, what is wrong with you? Get up now!”

He flexed his mouth, wrapping his sandpaper tongue around it, coughing and swallowing and trying again. “Alrrright, one second ... ”

“Did I just say that?” he thought. Mark stood up from his bed and stepped towards the door on reverse-jointed paws, and they felt strange and looked like they couldn't hold him up. He held out his arms to step over the junk on the floor, but found that he didn't need to, because his tail reflexively balanced him out. He could feel the new limb where there was none, but he was still too shocked to do more than just feel it, and let it do its own thing.

He looked down at his guitar laying across his chair, and at his desk and the upended top hat. “Maybe this was meant to happen.”

“Mark, come on!”

There was no time to question it. Given the choice between freaking out, not knowing what just happened, and acting as though he did know, he chose the latter. On a whim, he grabbed up the top hat and put it over his head, wriggling his feline ears and feeling the inside felt. Then he opened the door and looked up at his sister, who was now a bit taller than he was.

She jumped back, dropping the laundry basket that she'd been carrying and making a sound like he'd grabbed her by the throat.

“Good morrrning, Sara.”

The wrinkled sweats from the laundry basket were warm on Mark's bare feet. He could see his sister's black t-shirt and blue jeans, but the rim of his hat blocked out her face. He heard her struggling to form words. “Wh ... wh ... what happened to you?”

He tilted his head upwards, to look at her dark hair and makeup, and grinned at her. “Magic,” he said.

And from the look in her eyes, he could tell she believed him.

* * *

“I've canceled your appointment at the salon.”

Mark sat in a high-backed chair, hands clasped in his lap, tail swishing out lazily behind him between the chair's wooden slats. Try as he might, he could not keep from grinning, even though he was scared.

“I called mom and dad. But I didn't get a chance to tell them what happened, because they started telling me about this hurricane that just hit where they're at. They're stuck in Florida at least for the weekend. So we've got until Monday to decide what to do.”

He watched Sara pace, in front of the tapestry that hung on the wall segment that divided the kitchen from the dining room. Light shone in through the window, muted by the thick curtains. His sister had run all through the house, covering the windows and locking the doors.

She covered her face with her hands, and pulled downwards. “Oh man oh man oh man. What are we gonna do?”

“Let's hold a cookout, and invite all our frrriends.” Mark's grin widened.

Sara gave him a disdainful look. “Oh, sure. And maybe we'll invite the MI5 over for mouse kabobs, too!” She threw her hands up in the air, and stomped off into the kitchen. “I can't deal with this!”

But she could, Mark knew, and she was handling it better than he was. It occured to him that it was fun watching her panic. And it was a lot better than doing it himself. He decided to let her worry about everything, until he stopped being scared and was able to think.

He heard the kitchen cabinets squeaking open and shut. This went on for a minute or so, and he finally decided to see what Sara was up to. He hopped upright, amazed at how fast he felt and how quickly he regained his balance, his tail swishing out behind him. Then he padded out into the kitchen. The linoleum tiles were cool under his paws.

He saw her rummaging through the canned goods inside the cabinet next to the fridge. “What arrre you doing?” he asked.

“Seeing how long we can last.” She closed the door and stood up. “I'm going to try to convince mom and dad to stay there in Florida another week. It's not likely to work, but it's worth a shot.”

“Okay.”

“You'll have to skip school ... ” She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. “I'll make up an excuse and cover for you.”

Sara looked over at him. “You'll make it through this somehow. I know you will.”

Mark wanted to cry all of a sudden, and he had no idea why.

* * *

Sara went out to buy groceries, and Mark spent two hours trying to shower himself. When he came out all his fur was matted, and his clothes felt wet and limp.

He woke his computer from sleep mode and sat down to it, but typing and using the mouse was a chore. His hand would not fit his optical laser mouse the right way, and he had to hold it two-handed just to get it to do anything. With his fingertips gnarled, he could barely type. And his leather chair wasn't comfortable anymore, because his tail kept getting in the way. He tried to sit on his knees, but that way just pressed his reverse-jointed feet into the back.

Mark finally gave up and sat down on his bed, as the screensaver took over his flat screen. He stayed there for a long moment, thinking without words, letting his subconscious mind churn. It occurred to him that he was still in shock, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that.

He looked over at his guitar, where he'd set it on one of the piles on the floor. And he knew what was going to happen, but he had to try anyway. Numbly he picked the guitar up, made sure it was connected to the amp and turned everything on. Then he found his pick, and began to strum.

It felt like he had gloves on. He couldn't carry a tune in these hands, not without learning all over again. Not without more years of practice. On a whim, Mark set the pick aside and tried to play using his claws. But then he snapped one of the strings, and the tune he was picking out SPROINGed to a halt.

He set the guitar aside and looked at it, overtaken by a strange feeling. He was still in shock, so he didn't know why he felt this way ... this strange mixture of fear and homesickness. But tears were starting to well in his slitted eyes.

The front door opened.

Mark wiped his face on his sleeve, and hurried downstairs to help put up groceries.

* * *

“I don't know what you can eat, so I just bought whatever. Hope you like Spam.”

Mark picked one of the cans up and looked at it. All he could see was canned cat food.

Sara went back out to the car to get the rest of the bags. It occurred to Mark that he was hungry, and he thought about how he could open this can. His claws wouldn't work, so he needed something to flip the pull-tab with, like a spoon or a fork or-

A knife.

He slid a long, sharp one out of the block and looked at it, fascinated by its gleam. He imagined himself actually trying to open the can with it, and slipping and cutting himself up, and the thought did not make him squeamish at all.

When his sister came back inside she saw him holding the tip of the knife towards his heart, a blank look on his face. “No!” she cried, and dropped all the bags and came running at him.

“She shouldn't do that,” he thought. “What if I slipped and hurt myself?” But then she was wresting the knife from his hands, and he let go but his claws sliced her. Sara dropped the knife, and it clattered to the floor, and she clutched her hands as blood seeped through her fingers.

She looked up at him, and he looked back. Then she began to cry, and that set him off too. And in a second they were both kneeling there on the kitchen floor, holding each other and crying. Mark saw where she'd kicked the knife to, when she'd dropped to her knees, and he couldn't believe what he'd been about to do with it.

“Don't you ever do that again. Do you hear me?”

The blood on her hands was sticking to his hair. He nodded quickly.

“Promise me you won't do that again!”

He nodded even more vigorously.

They sat there for he didn't know how long, crying and holding each other, and he clung to her as though to life itself. Then she finally unstuck her hands from his hair and stood up, and he stood up after her. “Come with me while I lock up the car,” she said.

“What if somebody sees me?”

“I don't care. I'm not letting you out of my sight.”

He stepped out into the world and looked around at it, at the overcast sky and the fields and hedgerows and the house across the street. There was no one there, and there were no cars in sight. But he felt a rush of adrenalin at the thought of danger, and the thought that it was okay to be there.

There was a CLUNK of mechanical car locks, and then Sara shut the door. “Okay ... let's go back inside now.” She offered him her hand, and he clasped it in his, this time careful not to extend his claws.

“We'll make it through this,” she said. “I know we will.”

His tail swished happily.

* * *

They stayed up that night playing Dance Dance Revolution, because neither of them could hold a controller. Then they played board games, and talked, and ate expensive cheeses and snacks while they watched movies. Sara's friends called to ask why she wasn't out with them, and she proudly told them she was spending time with her brother.

Mark grinned.

He went to bed that night feeling utterly dead, but glad to be alive. Glowing directional arrows danced in front of his eyes, and it occurred to him he'd been great at that game. “Maybe it's the tail,” he thought. “I should do that more often.”

“We should do that more often.”

He closed his eyes, and was out like a light.

* * *

The next day he woke up slowly, still feeling tired, remembering what'd happened the day before. Daylight came in through the window, and was just starting to shine in his face. Mark winced, and put up an arm to block it-

His arm was human again.

He sat up and looked at his hands. Then he reached up to feel his face. It was the one he remembered having, with a bit of fuzz on the chin from not having shaved in two days.

Mark pumped his arm in the air triumphantly, and did an air guitar solo as he jumped back to his feet.

“Yesterday was fun,” he thought, as he came down the stairs a few minutes later. “Who would've thought that I'd know what it's like to be a furry? Who would've thought that my sister was actually a nice person?” He grinned. “I think that I'm better off for all that.”

“I wonder if I could make it happen again?”

* * *

It was two minutes to the curtain call, and Three Layer Steak was running behind. Axel pounded on Kayleigh's door, his keytar already slung over his shoulder. “Kay, hurry up!” he shouted. “We have to be there right now!”

Then she opened the door, and he gasped.