Isaac wasn’t giddy, like they thought they’d be. Quitting their job after a long overnight shift felt good in the moment, but now, walking out to their car, the thought about what they’d do tomorrow crept into their mind.
Isaac walked out to their car, cheap plastic bag of belongings threatening to tear open right there on the pavement. The sky was just starting to shift from deep midnight blue to the cold grayness of summer morning, and the birds were starting to wake up, their chilly bird calls adding to the morning humidity.
Corn towered either side of the county road home, lopsided headlights poorly illuminated the potholes in the road. The morning news program was talking about the election in sixteen months, muffled by open windows and the combined sounds of engine and wind.
Fifteen minutes later, Isaac arrived home, and setting the weakening bag down on the porch to find their keys in the pale morning light, heard a noise.
Probably one of the neighbors, they concluded. Isaac’s neighbors were special cases, every one of them. Running a quasi-illegal auto-shop wasn’t really a problem, it was their drunken yelling, power tools grinding away at one in the morning, and patent refusal to just be neighborly that got to them.
Fiddling with the key in the door, Isaac heard the noise again. Closer.
“Uh…” Isaac hazarded, sweeping their front yard looking for anything or anyone. It didn’t help that Isaac was afraid of the dark, even though the sky was lightening further and the sodium street lamp on the corner did its best to push back the darkness, the shadows still dominated. “Hello?” they mumbled, barely under their breath.
The morning air was silent, Isaac’s heart wasn’t. Pounding in their ears was the fear of being followed home by someone looking for an easy mark. Isaac didn’t remember being followed home, there were no headlights in their rear view mirror.
Isaac glimpsed a shadow. There was a shape, peering around the corner of the house. They could see a flash of pink as the shadow retreated from view. Fumbling with the doorknob and jamming the key into the deadbolt, Isaac rushed and opened the door, slamming it shut behind them, clicking both locks back into place. What the fuck?
Then there was a moment of clarity: All my shit’s still out there.
Isaac hunched their shoulders, which reawakened the pain in their shoulders from that terrible fucking bed in work release, and leaned over the window sill next to the door. They couldn’t see any movement in the direction of the stranger. Still, though, they decided not to retrieve the bag until the sun was fully up.
Coffee gurgling into the pot, Isaac was pacing back and forth in front of the window, looking at their phone.
I’m glad you’re ok axyl but… why not call the cops? Their friend said.
bc fuck the cops. they haven’t hurt me or stolen my stuff yet, i’m not calling the cops. Isaac typed back.
Their phone buzzed with a couple more replies, Isaac ignored them, spying something stranger.
Do tigers live in colorado? They asked.
no, lol. are you on drugs? Someone replied.
No, seriously, Isaac quickly switched to the camera app, and zoomed in on the unmistakable striped tail poking out from around the corner of the building, waving gently, fur sleek and shiny, only disturbed by the breeze.
woah holy shit
Yeah i’m calling animal control.
A voice behind them chuckled. “No you’re not.”
Spinning around quickly, Isaac reflexively chucked their phone at the intruder out of pure, distilled panic.
“Why’d you do that?” the lean figure asked, the shape of her smile leaking into her words, phone clutched in a hand… a furred hand.
Stunned stupid by their decision to throw away their only means of communication, Isaac was further stunned more stupid by, irrefutably, what looked like their fursona, clad in black and purple athletic wear, strong midriff resting on long legs trained, no doubt, to jump as if spring-loaded. She reached up and pulled a strand of purple hair away from her eyes, sharp claws striking a sense of danger into the human.
“Hey, A, I think you broke her,” another voice joked, this one lower in pitch and less feminine, but Isaac couldn’t physically tell the one carefully putting away a lock-picking set into its case from the one smiling at the contents of their phone. The only difference was their outfits.
“X, you need to learn to hide better,” the one scrolling through the phone said.
“Still getting used to this thing,” she said, pulling her tail to the front. “What are you looking for in her phone anyway?”
There it was again… her. Isaac felt a little jump in their chest the first time but was more focused on the second of the two intruders at the time to pay it any mind.
The first one smiled, flashing a fang, “Ah, here we are!” She turned the phone around, revealing a drawing of the tiger, “The artist got my good side in this universe!” Her smile turned smug.
“It’s always nice to be seen, isn’t that right, Axyl?”
Isaac fainted.
