Strange Happenings
Midnight. They always came at midnight. The chimes from the old grandfather clock in the den jolted Daniel out of his restless dreams. It wasn't the chimes that woke him so much as the knowledge that They were coming. It was the same horrifying ritual, every single night.
The room was illuminated by an eerie pale green glow. Three figures in haz-mat suits stood around his bed. One of them held a large briefcase, another held a gun, and the third--the apparent leader, from the way he acted--was making entries into a large handheld computer. Daniel tried to escape, to run, to even move, but some unseen force held him in place, as immobile as the bed itself. The leader looked up from his computer and signaled to the one holding the briefcase, who set the case down and began to open it. Daniel strained to see its contents, but couldn't from his position. If only he could move...
The leader reached forward, grabbed the bedcovers and--
The shrill blast of Daniel's alarm clock filled the room. He'd had that dream again, the same one he'd been having every night for nearly a month. Except that it didn't feel like a normal dream. It felt more like a memory, but one that had been partially forgotten. Anyway, Dan had more important things to worry about, so he pushed whatever it was aside for the moment. Today was the last day of school, finally. All he had to do was survive his last few final exams, and he'd be home free. He wasn't about to let a creepy dream get him down.
***
Dr. DiCaoz glanced over his biology classroom. "Is anybody still working on the final?" he asked tiredly. He paused for a moment, then said, "If everybody is finished, you may talk quietly amongst yourselves for the remainder of the period." As the class erupted in chatter, he went back to nursing his hangover.
Daniel loved his biology class. It wasn't just that he was good at it, or that it was the last class of the day. By some bit of luck or fate, he happened to be in the same class as his four closest friends, Gassan, David, Pammy, and Jake. Gassan, David, and Pammy had become absurdly popular since coming to high school. Gassan was Lebanese and therefore "exotic," David was a star swimmer, and Pammy was a cheerleader. In retrospect, popularity was an inevitability. To the other popular kids, Jake an avid follower of the Furry subculture (he called it a craze, but nobody else did) and Daniel, the introspective writer, were social liabilities. Still, Gassan, David, and Pam never let their newfound "friends" keep them away from Jake and Dan. Privately, Daniel was grateful that he had managed to befriend the four people who appeared to be immune to high school drama.
"So, what'd you guys think?" Pammy whispered.
"I'm pretty sure Dr. Di is a nutcase," Gassan answered quickly. He was met with a chorus of approval from his companions.
"Anyway," Pam continued, "are we having our annual Thank-God-The-Schoolyear's-Over party tonight?"
"I can't go," Jake said, "I've got a convention."
"I can't go either," said David, "My dad's taking me camping. He's on a back-to-nature kick."
"I'm visiting my grandma," Gassan said. Pammy rolled her eyes.
"Alright," she sighed, "when do you guys get back?"
"Sunday"
"Sunday evening"
"Sunday, but it'll be late."
"So," Pammy continued, "is Monday night alright with everyone?"
***
The days passed quickly. By the time Monday arrived, he had gone an entire weekend without his mysterious dreams. He was mostly relieved, but part of him wished the visitors would come back so he could find out what they were up to.
The streets were charged with an eerie calm. A summer storm was coming. As Daniel reached Pam's door, he couldn't help but feel a strange foreboding. Something was decidedly wrong. He rang the bell.
"Come in," called Pammy. Dan opened the door and found friend sitting on the floor in a tidy circle. They were all staring at him, an unsettling hunger in their eyes. "We are playing Truth or Dare," Pammy intoned mechanically. "Please, join us. Truth or Dare?"
"Please choose Dare," Gassan said, in the same unearthly voice.
"The Truth is never any fun," agreed David, still in the same tone. Throughout the exchange, none of the four took their eyes off of Daniel.
"Is everything alright?" he asked. "You all seem...different."
Pammy answered in the same monotone as before: "We are collectively unnerved at a series of recurring dreams we have been having. Perhaps you too are experiencing these visions?"
"Yeah," Dan said, "but I'm not acting that weird about it."
"Perhaps," Pammy said, "All will be made more clear if you answer this simple question: Truth...or Dare?"
Written by Zodiac on 31 May 2008
Forgotten Memories
Daniel was taken aback by their behavior, more because they appeared almost zombified and not very attentive to things that were going on around them. If there was a fly buzzing around in the room somewhere, he doubted any of them would notice it over their uncanny focus on him. Answer the question, that seemed to be the unwary contract held between him and these puppets that were his friends. Maybe they were tired and exhausted after their respective weekend activities, but Danny had a hard time trying to justify those darting glances between each other like a conspiratorial borg hive mind.
"You guys okay?" Dan asked, hoping that this might be one last spark to yank them back onto the road of sense, but no dice.
"Truth or dare, Danny boy?" Jake intoned almost without any inflection, his hair still smelling of lingering traces of a bit of grime and sweat. At least that part of him was normal, as well as the mild scent of latex or rubber on his skin from the inner liner of a high end fursuit.
He quickly saw by their behavior that he wasn't going to get anywhere until he played their little game, whether these were actually his friends or not remained to be seen. It wasn't an easy choice to make either, as he knew what they were waiting for, expectantly ready for a hinge to snap like a spring on a mouse trap. "Dare." There, he said it. He let the genie loose.
"Was that so hard?" Pammy made a flourish of her arm like a cheer and chuckled, drinking from a pink sports bottle and looking around at her friends in on the secret. "So, who has a dare?" It seemed a rhetorical question, only one thing was on the mind of these pleasant imps.
It was hard, but only because Daniel had that voice in the back of his head that told him this was all wrong, but he couldn't put a proper face to those nagging feelings. They were obviously up to something, but his birthday wouldn't be around for several months. "We dare you to-" Jake paused, licking his thin lips as he savored the following moment like a morsel set before a snake.
Daniel was waiting on edge for them to continue. As much as he dreaded what was going to follow, a part of him wanted to get it over and have things back to normal. When Pammy finished his previous sentence, an odd bluish twinkle in her eyes that appeared and vanished so quickly that he wasn't even sure it was there in the first place. "Remember (indistinct unrecognizeable phrase)". Those words were like a trigger, well the latter one was because he'd never heard it before and yet something came rushing into his head. Memories. Lots and lots of disjointed memories that weren't his and couldn't make any sense. It was if he were remembering the past life not of another person, but an animal with a completely different set of senses.
Before he knew what was happening, his mind was rushing through a strange vocabulary he had never used: people, places, and things that never existed before. Except, they did, more real than he could possibly exist as though he shared a body with two souls. "What did you do?" He gagged out, collapsing and trembling on the floor like a seizure as they gathered around him and bundled his pathetic body in a big comfy blanket. They knew this would happen, and they were prepared. "You do not remember, Dan, but you will soon." Gassan said soothingly, rubbing his back like he were comforting an addict out of a hellish bout of withdrawal. Maybe it was, as his hangovers never felt this terrible and he hadn't taken anything more illegal than a few stim pills for studying late overnight.
Written by FluffyPony on 01 June 2015
Not human
Gassan, he was remembering, was not the Lebanese kid's real name, nor was he really Lebanese. He came from a far-flung place called The Star Realm, and that was why he was so strange compared to the rest of them. The Star Realm: no such place existed on Earth. Then again, none of them were from Earth, were they? He was remembering bit by bit of where he was from just as he felt something seize up in his body. His muscles were cramping at odd angles and his skin was burning up with a maddening itch all over like a sunburn trying to peel away. "And with the memory will come the mission." Gassan added, now a bit more familiar as someone who had come from a completely different squad to lend assistance.
Daniel remembered the squads, but didn't remember what they were for or why they were needed. Was he a brainwashed terrorist or assassin or something? He hoped not, as he liked his life in America a great deal and wanted nothing to do with any enemy entities. His mission. What was his mission? The burning on his skin turned into a fervent fever intensity as he lost all control and had to throw back the blankets just to scratch, well, everywhere. His fingernails were working frantically to scrape away this unbearable crawling sensation all over his flesh as he felt an odd pain in his back. On occassional touches back there, he could feel two nubs growing out of his skin almost like horns. It was pointed bone trying to escape as he ignored it over trying to get the mosquito-like bites to stop harassing him.
Little by little, the itch did stop, but each place where it ceased there were tufts of cushy pure black fur a few inches long. He noticed a similar much smaller nub growing out of the top of his buttocks like a horned tramp stamp, but ignored it as he tried to make sense of the shiny coat of hairs instead. He was turning into some kind of animal and didn't understand why, yet to all of his friends, this seemed quite normal and par for the course. In fact, as his memory of the previous life came back, he realized Gassan wasn't even supposed to be here except for emergencies as the recon coordinator. Recon. Who were they spying on? Earth.
That last bit of information floored him and he tried to make sense of it just as more changes spread over his body like accelerated wildfire in a dry wheat field. The fur was all over him and the itch was gone. Just as he calmed down, the blanket was thrown back over him and they all pressed in close with firm massages through the fabric against his body. The fur was just the beginning as he felt something pop out of his shoulders and elongate into poles of bone-shrouded flesh, growing in strength and bulk with a whispery lightness and lack of weight. Whatever was on his back was almost intangible and didn't feel like it was there, at all.
His hair, normally so neat and formal, was now growing to meet his collarbone and beyond. The words of wisdom, "It will grow back," couldn't possibly be anymore true. It was longer, but it didn't feel like his old hair anymore, instead a little more wiry and thick with a nice polish to it like it had been shampoo'd to oblivion. The thing growing out of his rear was the same story, as he could feel whatever it was lengthen through the backs of his thighs where there was a similar texture of shiny silky hairs.
Was that it? Were the changes over? No, he was still in the middle of them as his face seemed to elongate a bit, creating a strange accordian effect with his eyes that he wasn't sure he was seeing. He couldn't take it in fully, anyway, as the semi-dark state under the blankets was like a cave or burrow just allowing the tiniest peeks of light within. Still, he could feel just fine. It was a very long nose and his mouth was further away than normal. Would he come out of the covers looking like some kind of sheepdog?
After that was the last touch, as something funny happened to his hands and feet. They came together as his skin seemed to induce a hostile takeover of his fingers and toes like a creeping mold or tangle of vines. His fingernails themselves grew much longer and connected with each other, feeling very much like large teeth attached to his limbs, but the ones on his wrists, for as hard and bony as they seemed, were still unusually dextrous to leave any doubts of holding objects without grounds. Whatever these things on his arms were, they seemed made for walking on and holding most objects. After all of that, it was over as he didn't feel any other changes overtake him, although all those muscles and bones rearranging did leave him sore and stiff. Daniel wouldn't doubt that when he came out from under the covers that he would be looking at himself as a werewolf.
As much as he wanted to see what had happened to his body, his friends wouldn't let him. Instead, they encouraged him to sleep. As antsy and curious as Dan was to see the new look, they were right: after an ordeal like that, he needed the rest so his overextended body could recover from what had been done to it. Even so, It was still a very difficult rest as all kinds of sore spots would jar him awake at random moments with protest.
Written by FluffyPony on 02 June 2015
The Reveal
When he awoke, it was like someone played hell on his muscles. Everything hurt in some unexpected way, and he felt a bit more bare beneath the blanket as his clothes had evidently been taken away. This probably made more sense, since he had too lush a coat of fur to wear anything over it too easily, but the idea of being nude like an animal unsettled him. With his stirrings, each of his friends took their notice of him a few at a time, but it was Pammy that went to him first. "Are you ready to see the truth?"
Truth or dare. He should've known. Now, he was going to get both because this was their way of easing him into an uncomfortable awareness that he had a past life and had gotten too immersed in a lie. That he had forgotten the whole reason why he had been sent to Earth, but had been converted to something he wasn't. Daniel was remembering now, bit by bit. If he had a gold for every time that happened, he'd be living in a Sky Castle. That last thought stopped him in his ruminations, causing him to wonder where he'd heard it before. Was it something Garran or Jake said?
"The truth, yes. Let's start with that." Dan finally spoke gustily, a strange higher-pitched voice came out that he didn't recognise as his own, or even male. It startled him. Still, there was nothing for his bewilderment as they helped him rise to unsteady feet in front of a tall plate glass mirror on a closet. As the blanket fell away, it was hard to figure out who or what was staring back at him. Her. The body was that of a horse with wings, with black fur as dark as a moonless night, and a pair of eyes full of sharp but questioning curiosity and intellect. There were no doubts toward gender, the way she accomodated those nice curves and luscious bumps of her pegasi body.
She was remembering, but not very quickly, so they had to fill in the gaps as she stood there curiously staring at the other bipedal naked female pagasus in the mirror like a stranger quickly becoming a tangible old friend, and then after that, her rightful self as familiarity dawned. "Night Rider, The Old King sent us on a mission into other realms to colonize with friendship and wings after he was rejected from the Greater Realm for his forward unconventional ways. He is under cover at their United Nations scoping out the political scheme while we awaited as sleeper agents to acclimate to the culture and prepare for the arrival of further like-minded allies to bring our winged glory to this world." It all seemed so strange, so unconventionally weird that Night had to stop and think it through for herself as her friends looked on expectently in their human forms hoping she would remember soon and get back on the friendship-spreading conquest bandwagon like the rest of them so they could go on observing and slowly perfecting a ponification formula for the humans.
Night Rider remembered, but that didn't mean she accepted what was going on. Even so, she knew that refusing outright would just earn her a couple months or more in the solitary confinement of the reconditioning chamber back at home base in Greece. Instead, she had to take hold of this insanity and accept it on the outside like some exposed conspirators did a few years back before The Old King's first failure at forced colonization of the Greater Realm. "Yes, let's get to it every peg. May the wings be freedom." And that was all Night had to say to trick them into thinking she still believed in the old regime while reviling it every second with vile about to come up the back of her throat.
Written by FluffyPony on 03 June 2015