Fall of the Rightful King-Clean

Chapter Five

Alan

Waking up that first day, I sure as heck didn’t expect to get turned into a unicorn. Not the kind of thing that crosses a guy’s mind when he’s at a convention. The cramped motel room smelled like junk and I didn’t want to stay in there any longer than I had to, so when my alarm went off, boom, I was out. Shower, done. Breakfast burrito, done. On to the convention center.

See, I really, really wanted to get some pictures signed by my favorite webcomic artist. Problem was, she was really popular, and the line for her booth would be long. I was feeling pretty good about my chances, though. My podcast audience had done me good by scoring tickets. Since we were about catching the freaking government doing shady stuff, I called them "Spookbusters," and my Spookbusters were amazing. Weirdos, every freaking one of them, but that's the kind of person it takes to see the truth out there. Their donations kept me podcasting and eating.

Glancing back at the comics and character art in the backseat, I started to get seriously nervous. This wasn’t such a big deal, right? She just draws comics. She draws the best comics online with freaking awesome art and it's funny as crap and she's pretty hot. So yeah, ok, it was a pretty big deal. Traffic was terrible– there were way more cars than I would’ve expected for that time of day. Not a lot of people were heading to the con – I was one of only a few people that took the exit leading to the convention center. Most people just kept heading out of town. Weird. Was there a holiday or something I had forgotten about?

My car was getting too hot, so I turned off the heater. It was pretty dang cold for the time of year, so I kept the heater on most of the time. Couldn’t risk damaging the prints though. Wait, would heat from the car even get hot enough to damage it? Crap, I hope not.

I wasn’t comfortable in my car even at the best of times – it was a 2000 and something, some kind of crap car. I wasn't super skinny, or even kind of skinny. I was a fat guy.

And fat guys like me do not like tiny parking spaces. Took me a freaking month to find a parking spot that I could get out of without having to cut off a leg.

“Really, people,” I grunted, squeezing out of what to me was a tiny gap, so you know, only big enough to fit a buffalo through. “Your cars are so close they're going to be stuck together.” I jogged as best I could towards the venue, but stopped as I got closer. There was an obvious problem. There were people dressed in blue standing around the building, and about twenty pissed-off people outside. I got closer and heard the people in the crowd yelling at the security. One of the security members, a short lady, got on a ladder with a megaphone.

“People, please, we’re sorry that the convention has been closed, but you need to go home. You can’t stay here. You will be contacted by the convention organizers in the next few days.”

You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. I tried to yell a question at the security guards, but they were apparently done since people were starting to leave around me. I approached one of them, a guy carrying the ladder, but before I could get close he got inside the building and closed the door. I tried it, but it was locked, of course. I took a step back and looked at the building. Lights were off as far as I could tell. The heck had happened to make them close the convention like this? I mean, seriously, they hadn’t even given any freaking warning. You have to let people know before you just take advantage of them like this. It was a big con, too – this crap really wouldn’t look good for them.

I started to walk away when I noticed something orange flying in loops above a group of people a few yards away. Some guy probably had a drone all dressed up – from what I could see it had wings which actually flapped as it flew around, and it had some kind of pinkish hair coming off of it. Guy probably spent all his time working on it so it looked just perfect. Pretty sad, actually.

It was the girl near them that caught my attention. Her legs just looked… off. They were blue and were bent backwards. It actually looked like they were covered in hair. She had a blue and gold tail attached to her costume, and a couple blue ears sticking out of her head. As I got closer, I didn’t see her real ears – just the costume ones, but crap man, they looked real enough. One of them even swiveled towards me as I got close. She looked happy and was smiling, probably enjoying all this attention, making her tail swing back and forth. I looked at the side of her head. It was freaky to see that flat skin there – no sign of her ear at all. Messed up that she wanted to look like that. I mean, I get that it’s a costume and all, but she seemed really into it. She was taking pictures with people, and a couple people even got close and were touching her tail and ears. Eugh.

Horse girl noticed me and, with a big grin, asked, “Do you wanna picture with me?”

“Nice costume,” I said in response. “Almost looks real. How’d you hide your ears like that?”

She grinned. Stop smiling at me, I’m not some dang five-year-old. You don’t need to make everything look happy.

“I didn’t! My ears are right here!” With that she put a hand alongside one of her costume ears, which twitched as she touched it. There was something unsettling about that – the way it moved on its own. Whoever made this was way too good at it. Probably wasn’t her – she’d have got someone with talent to make it for her. Least he would get some money out of it.

I sighed. I wasn’t being fair to her, and I knew it. She’s just being happy and staying in character, good for her, especially with the con closed and all that. Might as well humor her, right? I noticed she was looking at me expectantly, like she was waiting for something.

“Didja hear me?” she asked, taking a step closer. That make my stomach turn. Her legs actually moved like a freaking horse leg, with the joint bending backwards and everything. I didn’t want to think about how she got her legs in there.

“What?” I asked, taking a step back as she took one forward. She seemed to notice that and stopped.

“Do you want to touch my ears?” she asked, the smile fading slightly from her face, before coming back.

“They’re really soft,” someone from the crowd added. I glanced in the direction of the voice, but there were still too many people around. Everyone was looking at me, and cosplay extraordinaire here was leaning her head down, putting her ears in easy reach. Might as well, right? I didn’t know why she wanted people to touch her ears, though. No matter how realistic they looked or how weird they moved, they’d still feel like fabric as soon as you touched them. I touched her ear.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the heck?

Her ear was real. Really real. I could feel the muscles inside shift slightly in my hand. The fur felt surprisingly soft and the skin underneath was warm. I was too stunned to move for a second, and in that second, someone said something and the ear turned to face that direction. I could feel the muscles on her head move the ear around. I felt like a jolt went through my arm and I pulled it back, looking at it and then back at the lady. The horse. The… I don’t even know.

“Are you ok?” she asked, looking concerned, and putting her own hand on her ear, right where mine had been.

“Your ears…” I said, using all my remaining brain power to put together those two words.

“Aren’t they neat?” she asked, smiling again. “They just grew today when I was in the shower.”

“Yeah, I just need to… I have to take care of panicking, I mean packing, I’m just going to go now.” And I was gone, probably leaving her offended that her freaky ears had freaked me the heck out.

Nope, stay calm now. Everything was cool. She had some really good costume that just seemed real. That’s all that happened.

“That’s all that happened,” I kept repeating, as I squeezed into my car and drove off. I was so freaked out by what had happened that I kept feeling phantom sensations, kind of like when your phone vibrates and you reach for it but it isn’t there, you left it at home today when you met a girl who has freaking horse ears. I kept feeling her ear in my hand. The image of her legs kept popping into my head, which made my knees hurt as I thought of hers bending backwards. I started rubbing my leg around my knee, where the phantom pain hurt the most. All of I sudden I realized I was rubbing against coarse hair, and I whipped my head down to look.

Oh, right. Leg hair.

Chuckling at my panic, I pulled onto the freeway. I checked my mirrors and noticed something very unusual. My hair, which should have been blonde, was turning brown, starting at the roots. This by itself wouldn’t be a problem, except that, I don’t know, I’d never dyed my hair in my life. Even as I watched, I thought I could see the brown area get slightly bigger.

I suddenly remembered that I was in traffic and looked ahead, both hands on the steering wheel as I pulled around a slower moving car. Ok, hair was an issue. Something was wrong with my hair. That alone wasn’t a big deal, right? I’d heard that hair could get sun-bleached. Maybe mine had gotten darker in the sun. That’s a thing, right? I had been at the con for a long time yesterday, and a lot of it was waiting outside since the venue was so crowded. Right. My hair got darker in the sun. No big deal. I found myself rubbing my knee again, trying to relieve the aches. It almost felt like my knee had been forced to go a weird way and got strained. Almost like it was being pushed the wrong directi-

Nope. I was standing most of yesterday and all my flab probably just stressed out my knees. I sat all day most days, so it’s not like they got a lot of use. Come on, Alan, you’re freaking yourself out here. My leg started to bounce up and down, which was a really bad thing to have happen while driving, so I tried to hold it down with my hand. Most of the traffic was going the other way, a lot of people heading to the con, I guessed, leaving my side relatively clear.

I sped along the remaining road, making it back to the motel. I stumbled out, my knees protesting. The pain was radiating down to my feet now. It wasn’t particularly bad, but it scared me. I fumbled with my keys at the motel room door and dropped them. Bending down to pick them up made me wince in pain. My hands were shaking, my legs hurt, and all of a sudden I really had to piss. Dang it body, why is it always the worst times? I grabbed my keys, hands shaking, and I stumbled into my motel room. I shut the door behind me, stepped into the bathroom, and sat down on the toilet, holding my head in my hands.

Dang it, it was hard to calm down. That freaking girl… nah, whatever, it was just a costume. I took care of my business and took some painkillers and my heart meds, before leaving. My heart was still going like crazy, but it started to calm down. I took a beer out of the tiny fridge and sat down on the bed.

Ok. Sitrep. Am I dying? No, probably not. I just got freaked out over some girl with some really intense costume. Probably all got started when the con decided to just freaking cancel. Seriously, what the crap? I pulled out my phone and checked the con’s page to see if they’d posted anything about the closure. Actually, they had. They were like “Oh, we’re so sorry, everyone was getting sick and we needed to close it, you’ll all get refunds…” Load of garbage. Anyway, I’d be heading home earlier than expected. I pulled out my phone and called Nick, absently scratching my neck.

“Mm-hmm,” he said.

“Still asleep? How are your lady friends doing, Nick? You did get busy with, what was her name, Nancy? No? Not even Stephi?” My neck was really itching now, and it was spreading up my head and down my back now. Did I get allergies now? I kept talking to Nick as I stood up and moved to the bathroom. I wanted to see if I had a rash there or something – it definitely felt rough there. That’d just be freaking great, getting a rash on top of all the rest of the crap I’d faced today.

“You can make fun of me all you want when you get a girlfriend.”

Yeah, yeah, touché or whatever. “So are you guys ok? I heard some freaking huge storm hit you."

"Yeah, we're... we're ok," he said. "Tried to call you, actually, but the signal was crap."

"Good." I said. "So, the con freaking sucks. The idiot organizers closed it today, out of freaking nowhere, which is bull crap. They had a freaking agenda like two months ago! Something’s up. I think the government’s trying to shut down anything that’s weird, you know?”

“Uh huh,” he said,

“Some of these guys have got some freaking crazy costumes, though. Freaky as heck how realistic some of these things are. Anyway, wanted to let you know I was heading home early. I should be back by tonight, but it might be early morning.” He didn’t say anything, but I could hear stuff behind him. “Nick? You still there?”

“Yeah. Alan, so, why can’t you stay at the convention? I mean, you went all the way out there,”

“I saw a lot of what I wanted to yesterday, and besides, the idiots aren’t even letting people in. I just saw an update go up on the con’s Facebook page apologizing and saying they’ll refund people.”

“No, you need to stay there. Or, can you… can’t they…”

Brittney, one of our roommates, yelled in the background. “I can’t believe I HAVE HOOVES! EEEEEE!”

What. I actually stopped what I was doing and looked at the phone for a second before putting it back against my ear.

“Um, Nick, was that Brittney? What the heck did she say?”

“Look, I’ve got this under control,” he said in a rush. “I mean, they’re not – just – can’t you stay a bit longer?”

“Uh, no, not after that. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

After that? Heck no. There was no way horse girl at the con was for real with her ears and that story, but just hypothetically, maybe she was telling the truth, and maybe whoever Nick was with was having the same thing happen. Hypothetically. None of that could be real. Speaking of things that couldn’t be real, that itchy feeling was covering most of my back now. I turned the mirror and turned around so I could see my back, and pulled my shirt up.

The heck?