Written for The 'Open' Forum's contest, with the following prompt supplied by Chimerical Knave: "Ain't it Grand?"
Critique and concrit welcome, as there's a chance I might do some minor touch-ups before the contest ends.
When he first went out on his own, the wolf had deliberately set up his hideout as far away as he could get from this neighborhood, but he still knew the area a bit too well for his own comfort. For instance, this late at night, he knew that this particular residential street—and seven others in the vicinity—would be completely clear. Still, out of habit of working in the poorer, seedier districts, his paranoid eyes darted from left to right anyway, making sure it stayed that way. A passerby would probably not take kindly to a scrawny teenaged wolf crouched up against the apartment's door, an empty grocery bag slung over his shoulder and two improvised metal tools jammed inside the lock.
Of course, if he'd been in the richer quarters of the city, with the multi-tiered superstores and the mansions that rose high into the clouds and stared you down like the insignificant little speck you were, the locks would have been all tech. But here in the southeastern slums that were Corneria City only because no one had the heart to break them off and ruin the city's perfect circular shape, luxuries were slim.
The lock gave way with practiced ease, and the stale, pungent scent of three foxes welcomed him inside. His eyes scanned for points of interest. The only exit was through the front doors, near which was a lamp he could use as an improvised weapon, if necessary. And most importantly, on the far side of the room, there was a fridge surrounded by wooden cabinets. Keeping his steps light, he made his way over to it.
Sauces and drinks dominated the fridge, but the bottom compartment had a hefty hunk of an aged yellow Zonessian cheese that he pounced on. He ripped the lining open and hefted the rind out, discarding the wrapper to the floor. His canines punctured in and tore off a large chunk; the taste was cold, sour, and so good that he had to bite back a groan of delight and remind himself why he'd come here with his bag in tow.
Munching on the sour block, he turned his attention to the cabinets above the fridge. Perishables like cheese were good treats, but far from ideal to carry out with him. Cabinet after cabinet squeaked open and eased shut. Sealed containers and premade mixes dominated the first two, but the third would've made him grin if not for the gravity of theft. Two bags of mixed nuts and dried fruit; a jar of pickles; a large container of peanut butter beside a box of crackers. After he bolted down the rest of the cheese, deft paws raked them all into his bag. Deft, but nervous.
He was shaking.
The cabinet door shut with a little more force than necessary. The next one came open, and his paws went to work, seizing up the three containers of canned meats first—two tuna, one chicken—leaving an entire shelf of canned vegetables. His bag was getting heavier, and he hardly looked at each can as he shoveled it in. All vegetables tasted equally poor to a carnivore, but food was food.
One of the cans groaned and collapsed against the pressure of his nails.
Damn cheap metal. Damn too-long nails. Shit.
Liquid spilled out of it as it slipped out of his grasp a with loud, resounding clang against the counter. He watched, frozen, as it rolled off the surface and landed again, louder, on the tiled floor.
Cursing was a habit he'd picked up from the other kids in the last few years, but it neither relieved the pain from where the metal had cut his thumb nor muted the noises. He was paralyzed, in one of those awkward moments where he knew he'd messed up, but he had to just stop and sit there stagnant in disbelief of exactly how much of an idiot he was.
Footsteps vibrated the floor.
Fuck you, Wolf. Get the hell out of there.
He turned to sprint out the door, but one of the straps of his gods-knew-how-old bag collapsed under the heavy weight of its contents. One, two, three, four cans spilled out and smacked into the floor before he managed to stabilize the bag, and immediately he was on his knees, paws shaking as he crammed the rolling cans back into his sack. The footsteps grew louder and quicker with each passing second. He turned to pick up the final can, but when he heard the sound of a door opening, he jerked his paw away and scrambled to his feet instead, holding the bag by its underside to keep it from toppling again.
He tried to run, but his paws slipped on the puddle of carrot juice that had spilled out the punctured can, and his claws scraped uselessly against the floor. His paws clutched the counter, bracing himself tightly, barely preventing him from slipping and falling over.
"Drop the bag and get the hell out of my house," a low vulpine voice said behind him.
Panic helped him find good footing. He burst out the door of the apartment, allowed himself a quick glance backward, and sprang off, fleeing down the streets.
The fox chased him.
Of course the fox chased him, considering how much food he was about to walk away with. That was probably a week's salary, and judging from the scents in the house, the fox had a pup to feed.
Of course he's a good father.
This wasn't the time for a lance of jealousy to pierce his chest. Though the wolf was leaner and faster, he'd been starving for the past few days, and he could already feel his chest tightening and his breaths coming shallowly. Unfortunately, this was a small road to begin with, and most of the alleys were dead ends. In the dark, he couldn't tell which were which, and he wasn't going to risk going down the wrong one and getting cornered.
Think, Wolf.
The wolf might not have had much, but he had a good pair of eyes and a sharp mind to back it up. As he glanced down one of the alleys, his eyes caught sight of a large cylindrical vat. His mind spat out the solution—and he recited every curse he knew, because he hated himself for what he had to do.
He darted down the dark alley towards the vat and dropped the bag on the ground beside it. Standing as tall as he could, he pressed in the releases to swing open the hatch that was its lid. In went the bag, and a few seconds of awkward climbing later, in went the wolf. He pulled the hatch shut over him, sealing him inside.
Organic material never went completely bad. Milk and meats spoiled, sure, but not until after a very, very long period of exposure to warm air did they completely decay. Even expired foods that were unfit for consumption still held nutrients in them, and the right technology could separate the waste from the proteins and recycle spoiled food into nutrient paste.
The right technology had existed for quite some time, but implementation proved to be the greatest challenge, just like with material recycling. A few engineering hurdles later, organic recycling bins had started to hit the streets. He'd paid some badger a slice of bread for that information a few years back. One might think vats full of spoiled food might be a boon for the starving homeless, but there was a reason why the vats had been designed so that civilians deposited their waste inside without ever having to take a whiff from the contents.
He'd tried, once, to scavenge from one of these things when the gnawing pains of hunger in his stomach threatened to consume him, but decided in the end that he would rather starve.
He fought the urge to open his mouth and pant in exertion after the run. He made himself hold his breath as long as he could, until his lungs were burning and stinging and begging him for sweet air. Finally, he had to give in; he sucked in a breath, and it was everything his lungs did not want, tenfold.
Good. Great. Just grand.
The scents of molded vegetables, rancid meat, and spoiled dairy wormed their way deep into his core, and it took every ounce of self control he had not to retch and add half-digested cheese to the mix. Something wet was seeping into the seat of his pants, and his fingers had dipped into something congealed and slimy, and he really, really did not want to know what it was.
Footsteps, again. Quick and hard at first, but they slowed to a halt right outside the wolf's prison. He could hear the fox panting.
"I know you're in there."
And then there was silence except for the harsh thumping of his heart, every thud exacerbating the cruel need to breathe. The wolf let his lungs idle until they stung and burned for lack of air, and then he tried to grab a quick breath through his mouth, but it was just as awful as the last one.
He prayed the fox wasn't dialing up the police on his communicator, because that would be the end of him.
A loud clang stung his ears, and the whole vat shook, causing him to take it a sharp breath, but it hitched in his throat and sent him into a brief coughing fit. Instinctively, he brought his paw up to cover his mouth, but he got a whiff of whatever putrid paste he'd dabbed his finger in and coughed harder. By the time it was over, he'd felt and heard the fox's paws beat into the side of the metal walls. From out here, he could here every one of the fox's low breaths, and knew that the fox's fingers rested on the controls to release the hatch, trying to decide if his food was worth it.
The wolf did something he hadn't done in a long time: he whined.
Rather than hearing the grating noise of the latch being released, he heard a sharp, "Hmph. Pathetic." The fox released his grip on the latches for the lid and walked away.
The wolf sat there until well after the footsteps had died down, until he just couldn't take it anymore, and then he finally undid the hatch from inside. He pulled out the bag, reached up over the vat's lid, and dropped it on the ground outside, then scrambled his way up and out, over the edge.
The force of the landing made him bend his knees, causing the too-tight fabric of his pants to strain against his rear. In the process, he realized that his rump was completely soaked through with whatever awful mess he'd sat in.
The wolf groaned. He leaned up against the side of one of the alley's walls, behind the vat and out of sight of the main street, and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he was looking up at the black sky. When he was a pup, he'd heard stories about space travel and the beauty of the Lylat system, and he'd promised himself that one day, he'd see the stars from the heavens. But there was so much light pollution on Corneria that he'd never even seen the stars from the ground. The only promise he'd been able to worry himself over was the promise of survival, and in times like these, his already-tattered clothes now completely ruined by the stink of rot, he doubted even that one.
At least he had food.
He let out a drawn-out sigh and slid down lower on the wall, until he was sitting with his back up against it. If he closed his eyes for long enough, maybe it would all just go away. Maybe he could live the life that he'd wanted to all along, instead of constantly being forced to stoop lower and lower just to live through the next day.
"Quite the show."
His head darted up, alert. A snow leopard loomed in front of him, not quite an adult, but definitely an older teenager than the wolf. Judging by the ripped clothes and the lack of shoes, the leopard was as homeless as he was.
Shit.
If he were to list a few cardinal rules of slum street-life, pretty high up on the list would be avoid the older kids. Like the wolf, they hadn't survived by being nice to anyone, and right now, the wolf was a fast and easy source of food.
"He was right." The leopard grinned. "You are pathetic."
The wolf bared his teeth, and he couldn't stop a growl from building in his throat. "I'm desperate, not pathetic. You're the pathetic one here. Can't take food from someone older and stronger than you?"
A wicked grin splayed out on his muzzle. "Pathetic, desperate, and stupid. If you were one of us, I might leave you half of what's in that sack—"
"Liar."
The word only intensified the feline's grin. "But you're not being very nice." Felines, without exception, were all to some degree vicious predators, especially the larger breeds like snow leopards. And this cat had the wolf exactly where he wanted him. Sure, wolves were predators, too, but bred into every cat was a sick desire to play with its food.
The feline crouched down, and one of his paws settled over the top of the wolf's knee. Claws extended, threads snapped, and pinpricks of sharp pain made the wolf jerk away. A wolf wouldn't have done that. A wolf wouldn't be grinning this hard watching his prey squirm.
"Give me the bag."
"Fuck you."
The cat blocked his only escape. He was bigger and taller and had sharper claws. There was no way the wolf could win this, but he could feed himself on the contents of his bag for weeks, maybe even a month if he stretched it out and scored at the once-a-week soup kitchen that served tiny bowls of diluted nutrient broth that tasted like hot piss.
There was no way in hell he was giving this up.
He shoved out with his legs, pistoning them hard into the cat's chest. The older male swore as the momentum propelled him backwards, a few stumbling steps barely keeping him from keeling over. The wolf picked up the bag, ignoring the two cans that toppled out of it in his haste, and—
And the leopard was in his face, snarling, spraying droplets of foaming spittle onto his muzzle. A paw came down hard on his shoulder. The leopard's other arm reared back, as if preparing for a punch, and then all the wolf knew was pain.
First, he realized he could no longer see out of his left eye. Then the tangy scent of his own blood reached his nostrils. Then the pain hit him, searing and brutal, in three sharp lines that passed right over his eye, and he howled.
He couldn't open the eye, but he definitely could feel it. A paw darted up to cover the wounds, applying pressure, hoping to stop the bleeding, but the scent was just getting worse.
The cat stared at him coldly, tail lashing behind him.
"Pick it up. Refill it."
It took a moment for the wolf to realize what he was talking about. He'd dropped the bag, and all the contents had spilled out of it.
"Get on your knees and pick it up."
He bared his teeth, but he didn't have any choice. He slowly lowered himself to the ground. It was a task for two paws: one to hold the bag, and the other to put the cans and baggies into it. He tried not to notice the smears of blood his paw left on the fabric that he'd come to know so well. The pain in his eye only worsened as time went on, but he had no choice but to continue, else he'd probably lose the other one, too. Item after item dropped back inside the sack, and as Wolf leaned over to grasp the last bag of mixed nuts, a droplet of blood dripped from the wound on his face and splattered onto the nasty conrete.
The feline extended his paws downwards. The wolf bit back countless insults as he lifted his old bag just high enough for the feline to reach down and scoop it up without having to bend over. His thanks was a hiss, and a rough kick right to the chest, sending him sprawling backwards onto his back.
He didn't know how long he lay there, hoping the pain in his eye would stop.
When his mind began to function again, the first thing he did was to sit up and rip off a long strip of cloth from his pants and tie it around his eye like a combination of an eyepatch and a bandage. Maybe the precious little bit of pressure he could get from the awkward angle would stop the bleeding, or help it heal. The cuts were impossibly deep, and he idly wondered if he would ever see out of that eye again. If he could just...
Could just what? It hit him that he didn't know how bad it was. That he knew absolutely nothing about eye injuries. That he had no idea how to treat it. That there was a possibility it might kill him before he could even get to a mirror to see how bad it was.
His body was certainly ill-equipped to deal with the wound on its own. He hadn't eaten in two days, and he was in no condition to go on another raid. The soup kitchen would be open in two days, but that was all a game of luck, of if he could end up far enough ahead in line to actually get something, but that wasn't likely since anyone could just shove him aside and steal his spot, in this condition.
He could go to the hospital, sure, but it was so far away, and they'd ask all kinds of questions—and was this life really worth fighting for?
Maybe this was it. He'd lived longer than most had, and he hadn't even joined a gang or taken food from someone weaker than him. But if this was it, there was one last thing he'd like to do before he died.
All throughout his life, he'd only called two places home, and he'd vowed a long time ago that he would one day return to the first.
He managed to get himself to his feet and carry himself out of the alley. Even after all these years, he still knew the route well, so well that his mind could navigate mostly on autopilot, and all he had to do was keep himself from keeling over from the pain in shoulder, stomach, knee, and god-forsaken eye. He felt like he was limping. Passersby gave him looks that were slightly more offended and reproachful than normal, and he stared back defiantly with his one good eye, daring them to say something to him.
Turn right. Turn left. Go straight. Turn right.
It took him ten brutal minutes that felt like ten brutal hours before he came to a halt outside the door that had haunted his dreams for too long. Out the corner of his good eye, he could still see the old hovercar he used to take on joyrides while his father was out. Until he'd been caught.
He didn't remember his mother, but his father did. What used to be nine parts man to one part aggressive cynical asshole flipped on her passing to nine parts hell and one part apologetic mess, who looked down at his son and saw all the ways he'd failed his wife. Or so his old man had told him.
Maybe he'd killed her.
The lock was tech, of course; O'Donnell valued his privacy. Wolf stood on his toes and let the scanner go to work, analyzing his good eye for a few seconds before giving a weary click that signified acceptance.
He turned the handle, took a deep breath, and stepped in.
The kitchen. Everything was the same as he remembered it: the same cabinet layout, the same fridge with the same magnets, the same microwave with the same broken display so you never knew how much time was remaining on the countdown. The same table. He ran his fingers over the smooth wood, trying not to notice the knuckle-shaped dents on its surface where his father used to sit.
What wasn't the same was the open can of pulled pork resting on one of the counters. Wolf stepped closer, and looked down into it. Whatever had been in the can at one point had now been reduced to something unrecognizable by flies.
Since his father hadn't come storming out of his room yet, there were two possibilities: one, he was out of the house (walking or public transit—the hovercar was still there); or two, he was gone.
There was no fresh scent of wolf in the house.
The pain in his eye was getting worse. He considered going into the bathroom and inspecting the wound, but decided that he'd really rather not know how bad it was. Instead, his feet carried him to the place that, for so long, had been his one and only sanctuary, until the door had been taken off the hinges.
He could almost smell his younger self's indecision in the air. Years and years of warring with himself until he finally got the nerve to just walk out and never come back. He hadn't even looked away when he started sprinting as hard as he could away from the place, and he hadn't stopped until he'd reached the other end of this quarter. Days passed, rain came and went. He found shelter in the storm drains on that side of the slums, and for years, the only reason he ever came back this way was to steal. His only regret was that he didn't do it sooner.
The room was so small, he could cross it in four strides. He ran his paw over the wood of his own desk, wiping away a thick film of dust. This single surface contained all of his wordly possessions: half a pack of gum he'd been so excited to find discarded on the street. An empty beer. A few magazines with pictures of ships on the inside—he still couldn't read any of the text. And...
The wolf sighed. When he'd been a pup, he'd told his father he wanted to fly. He wanted to enroll in the Cornerian Flight Academy, no matter the cost. So his father bought him a James McCloud action figure.
He didn't even know who James McCloud was. "He flies," his father'd told him. "Best to ever graduate the Academy." And that was the end of it.
All he knew was that every time he picked up the figurine—then and now, running his fingers over the faded paint on the plastic sculpture—jealousy surged deep in his chest, because there were people out there who'd had the dream he'd been denied handed right to them. He'd never get to figure out how good a pilot he could've been.
A faint electrical whining noise met his ears. He gingerly placed the figurine back into the footprints it had left on the desk's coating of dust. His legs led him towards the source of the sound, each lethargic step reminding him of just how much he didn't need to be reminded of the pain in his eye. He stopped at the threshold to his father's door, and hesitated for only a few seconds before stepping in.
He avoided looking at anything but the source of the noise. It was a transmitter device, lit up on the desk. His paws closed around the age-old device, and his good eye scanned the interface:
Secure Signal: ?-?-?-?
If nothing else, the old tech was secure and reliable. It didn't give a holo image of the guy on the other end, but to the right kinds of people, that might factor into the security quite nicely. At least this model didn't require you to hold it up to your ear. His thumb fingered the "Accept" button. Some small part of him hoped that the caller would give up before he finally made himself depress the button. The moment he pressed it in, before he could even release it, a grating, disembodied voice spilled from the device.
"Luben, do you mind explaining why it's been ten months since I received a report from you, and nine months since my sensors have fired?"
The house he used to know was gone, abandoned by his father and rigged with foreign spying devices. At any other time, the wolf's skin would've prickled, or he would've fired off several questions, but in face of the sharp throbs from his eye, the words didn't faze him.
"If you don't start talking I'm sending a team—"
"I'm not Luben." His father's name left a sour taste on his tongue.
A pause, and a rapid exhalation. "If you don't have a damn good reason why the hell you're in this house, I've got a nice little contraption rigged that'll blow you to ashes."
"I'm his son."
Another pause, but this one much longer. Excruciatingly long, because it left him with nothing to focus on but the pain.
"Where do you sleep?"
"The storm drain."
"You mean to tell me you've lived in the slums for all these years?"
"Like hell I've lived. I've just survived." The wolf eyed his father's desk, and for the first time, wondered what dark secrets were hidden in all those drawers. Then promptly decided he didn't want to know. "Barely. My eye's.. someone scratched it out. I don't know how bad it is." He grunted, almost embarrassed at the sound of his voice. "It hurts so much."
"I see." Cold indifference, like he didn't even care. "Tell me, Wolf, what is your greatest desire?"
"I dunno." His left eye begged him to answer, and his thoughts returned to the action figure on his desk. "Be like James McCloud."
"The military lapdog?" A laugh. "Damn celebrity pilots. All he does is star in Academy ads and speak at inauguration ceremonies. No, I can make you much better than James McCloud."
The wolf let out a breath. He didn't think he could trust the man, but something, anything, was better than this hell. "I'm listening."
"Stay put," the voice said. "I'll have a crew over in ten minutes. We'll assess the damage to your eye, and we'll make all your dreams come true."
His grip on the transmitter intensified. He didn't have anything else to lose. "Okay." His voice sounded too weak. "I'll stay."
"Your father was a good man," the voice said, "and so am I. I'll see to it that you're taken care of. You're working for Dr. Andross now. Do you understand?"
He'd heard the name before, and not in a good context. Something about one of the local research universities, and something about Venom, but he didn't care. He did what he had to do.
So he said, "I understand," and the link switched off, leaving him cold and alone for what he hoped would be the final time.