Alex the fox emerged from the lake, dripping wet. He hated being wet, because his fur smelled funny when he got soaked. But it was hardly his fault, his only mistake was being in a car with two friends when the one behind the wheel decided to drag race the three hamsters who were tooling along in their Kia Soul. Those guys were so cool and smooth that Alex knew they couldn't possibly win. Anyhow, the driver of Alex's car, a bear, had lost control of the vehicle on a curve, and they all wound up in the drink. The vehicle had been submerged in the lake, and the authorities apparently thought that all three of them were dead until Alex staggered out of the water some time afterwards. He figured that he had been knocked out when the car impacted with the water, and survived by breathing from an air pocket until regaining consciousness.
The lake was murky and had some depth to it, so Alex figured that it would be some time until the bodies of his friends were recovered. Alex walked back to where he had parked his scooter before going riding with his friends, and rode the Vespa to the next town. While riding he thought that he saw the figure of a man standing along the side of the road attired in hunting clothes and carrying a rifle. Alex closed his eyes momentarily to clear his vision, but when he opened them, the hunter was gone.
"I'm tired," thought Alex, "I've had the worst day of my life, and now as a result I'm seeing things!" Alex pulled his scooter into a motel when he reached the town, and rented a room. Settling into it, the fox looked out the window, and saw his own face reflected in the glass against the darkening sky. A moment later, that image had been replaced by one of the hunter, his face pale and his eyes dark and cadaverous. Alex gave a startled cry and jumped back, looking again in the window glass only to see the reflection of his own visage.
Troubled and shaken, Alex left his room and walked along the town street, seeking to clear his mind and find something to eat. He walked into a Grease World restaurant, walked up to the counter, and ordered a burger. Curiously, the employee on duty took no notice of him. He walked to another cash register and repeated his order, but again that cashier ignored him as if he wasn't there. "Oh, I get it!," exclaimed Alex, growing irritated. "You don't serve furries here!- -That's discrimination!" Alex stormed angrily out of the restaurant.
Continuing to walk down the street, Alex heard music coming from the open door of a church. He entered it to find a "Praise Team" rehearsing. The choir director saw Alex standing there and greeted him. In conversation, Alex related that he used to play an instrument. The choir director invited Alex to play something for him, so Alex rather awkwardly went up to to an electric keyboard, and proceeded to pound out a rather spirited version of "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones.
"Blasphemy!," screamed the choir director. "This is a house of God!- - Leave immediately!," he demanded of the fox.
Alex did as he was requested. "Pleased to meet you!," he said as he departed. "Hope you get my name!," he added. Alex really did love The Stones...
His sleep that night was filled with troubling dreams of furries dancing with one another in some kind of abandoned amusement park. There were many different species present, but their movements seemed strange and unnatural. Alex moved among them to speak with them, but none would pause to talk to him. He moved to the middle of the dance floor, the dancers parting to allow his advance. The back of a figure without a partner was turned to him. Slowly that figure turned about to reveal the face of...the hunter! A slight, disturbing smile crossed the hunter's lips as his waxen-looking fingers caressed the cold steel barrel of a rifle...
Alex woke up from his dream gasping and in a state of panic. He resolved to see someone the next day who might be able to help him understand what was going on. Morning finally came, and Alex went to town, parking his scooter. As he began to walk away from it, Alex accidentally bumped into a man from the side. When the man turned to look at Alex, he again beheld the pasty-white face of the hunter! Alex jumped back, visibly startled, and observed that the man was just another stranger. A second man who observed the scene came up to Alex then, and said that while he was no psychiatrist he did some counseling, and might be able to help out.
"Can you see me right now?," asked Alex. When the man said that he could, Alex accompanied him back to his office. In the quiet room, Alex talked to the man for half an hour, but strangely the man sat in a swivel desk chair with his back to Alex the entire time. When he had finished pouring out his account of the accident and all of the strange events that had transpired since that time, the seated man turned in his chair at last to face Alex. He saw with horror the pale features and dark eye sockets of the hunter, who looked silently at him, a slight but terrifying smile on his face!
Alex bolted from his chair, tore out of the room, and ran panting as fast as he could back to his scooter. He jumped onto it, fired up the small motor, and coaxed the Vespa as fast as he could as he raced out of the town. A few minutes down the road, Alex saw off to the side the abandoned amusement park that he had dreamed of. Thinking that he might elude the ghastly hunter who pursued him there or maybe find some answers, Alex spurred the Vespa onto the littered grounds of the park and dismounted. There was a flimsy and weathered wooden barricade blocking the entrance to the park, but Alex pulled it apart with some effort and entered.
The amusement park had apparently been abandoned for years. Alex saw dilapidated stands that had once housed games of chance, as well as rusting rides, tall weeds growing up beside the inoperative machines. A faded billboard hung at a crazy angle before a stand where once people bought soft pretzels and cotton candy. The place seemed filled with the clamor of happy memories long departed, the ghosts of long-gone children hanging in the air.
Alex shuddered involuntarily. There was an unspeakable sadness about the place, a chilling breeze sighing its regret. But faintly in the distance, Alex could hear the sound of music playing, melodies incongruous with this place of decay. He walked in the direction of the sounds...
...there, just slightly ahead now, Alex beheld a large pavilion of some kind, a place from which slow, almost mournful music emanated. He quickened his pace and entered the building, feeling like he had crossed the portal into another time or dimension. There on a dance floor before him swirled anthropomorphic dancers, their movements stiff and formalized; were they dancing a waltz? All were beings like himself, humanized animals. Alex tried to make eye contact with individual dancers, but their gaze seemed to be focused on something beyond Alex's perception, as if they danced on the edge between this life and the next. The dancing couples parted as Alex moved among them, until he was in their midst.
At their center. Alex beheld a figure without a partner, a solitary focal point about which the animal dancers had been slowly gyrating.- - It was the hunter! Alex saw that this figure's flesh, always pale, was now translucent, and that he could see the skull beneath the skin. The eye sockets were cavernous, some kind of bright black jelly moving inside the bony orbits. The hunter extended his arm towards Alex, and moved in his direction, followed by the dancers...
Alex backpedaled and then broke into a run, mere feet ahead of his pursuers. There was a beach outside of the pavilion; perhaps Alex could open the gap there as foxes had escaped their enemies since the beginning of time. His hind paws weren't intended to run on sand, however, and Alex felt slow and sluggish, bogged down by the loose sand. He lost his balance and fell, turning about to see the hunter and the spectral dancers descending upon him. The hunter's grin had turned into the terrible rictus of death. Alex screamed and threw his forelegs up in a futile effort to fend off the grasping limbs and bodies that enveloped him, and then he saw and heard no more.
The thorough diligence of the search crews had been rewarded, and a vehicle was dredged up out of the lake which housed three bodies, including that of a red fox who, like his friends, had drowned. In searching for the personal effects of the three friends, investigators couldn't account for the presence of the fox's scooter at an abandoned amusement park miles away from the lake where he had died. Neither could they explain the presence of a set of fox paw prints on a beach just outside of that site, solitary prints which ran up the beach for a short distance before abruptly coming to a stop and leading nowhere...