Chapter 107: A Darkness Within


The early evening's dark clouds hung low in the sky as the raccoon sadly stared down at the small cheap aluminum post which just had a simple number stamped upon a tag that hung from the top. Although her name wasn't on the grave marker, he knew who had been buried there. Around him were rows after rows of these silvery markers popping out of the ground of the weed-covered lot. This was the part of the cemetery where the undesirables were interned and in this case, the poor soul buried here had been a prostitute. "This is a dreary place to be laid to rest," he muttered to himself as he pulled his worn, stained tan trench coat tighter around his thin frame. "Meredith, a highland wildcat like you should have been buried in the mountains and not in this hell hole called Happy Town."

Pulling the collar of his coat up to cover his furry neck from the cold wind, the raccoon cursed when he saw white specks falling around him. "Great, now we are having snow in October…" he began to mumble, and then he realized it was grayish-white in color and it was not snow, but ash! With wide eyes, he looked upwind to see that animals in bright yellow hazmat suits were tossing bodies into a burn pit, and then he could smell the scent of burnt flesh. He had heard that there were more bodies than the morgues and crematoriums could handle, but he hadn't realized the city had resorted to this. The very thought of what was floating around him made him sick to his stomach and he would have thrown up if he had anything in his empty belly.

Shoving his paws into his coat's pockets, he slowly wandered deeper into the cemetery and towards the street. There were tombstones in this older part of the field and he paused to stare down at his father's grave. "Well pop, I never made it. Those dreams of a better life which I had, all died with you and they were as much a victim of a reckless drunk driver as you were," he softly said. His ears rose when he heard the sound of sniffling nearby and he slowly walked towards that mournful sound only to find a rabbit in a police uniform standing in front of a grave. Somehow he knew the stranger's name and he called it out, "Judy, where is Nick?"

She spun towards him in shock. "Who are you?" she asked.

"It's me Jake…" he began to answer, but he realized that she did not know him. It was then that he saw the name on the stone, it read Nicholas Piberius Wilde. "No…no…please don't tell me!"

"Where is your mask?" Judy demanded, her ears were raised in anger. "All you predators have to wear masks in public, you know that!"

"Mask?" was all he could mumble in confusion as she stepped towards him with her paw on her tranquilizer gun.

"Your mask, it is against the law for you to be out in public without one! You don't need to catch or spread the distemper," Judy demanded as she approached him with her right paw on her gun and her left paw outstretched. "You should be in quarantine and not outside without permission from the Health Department. I don't see a yellow tag hanging around your neck approving you to be in public. Where are your papers?"

"But...but, they stopped the feline distemper outbreak, didn't they? Remember I got a gold medal from the mayor for…?" he stuttered out, even as he stumbled backward in puzzlement and almost tripped over a gravestone. Why did he say that? Did he really help save the city from the mad scientist who tried to release a new strain of distemper into the city and how did he know this rabbit since he was pretty sure they had never met before?

"No, they did not!" Judy angrily snapped as she drew her dart pistol. "It wiped out most of the cats in Zootopia and then mutated to infect all predators."

Jake didn't know what to do and so he panicked and ran, twisting and turning through the maze of tombstones until he reached the street.

Once he had escaped the police officer, he just roamed in a mental haze for what seemed like hours and he didn't know how he got downtown. The thin raccoon now found himself standing in front of a familiar old stone church and Jake vaguely remembered that it was a safe place. Pushing against the stout wooden doors, he slipped inside seeking sanctuary. "Any port in a storm?" a voice called out and he looked at a figure standing near the worn alter. For some reason, the raccoon had expected to see a kindly old otter, who he somehow knew was the church's priest, but he recoiled in fear when he saw a tall red deer in tattered black robes. There were icicles hanging from the gaunt deer's undead antlers and he had a medallion of a snake eating its own tail hanging around his neck. A vague memory flashed into his mind and he knew the creature before him was the False Priest...but hadn't that evil cult leader drowned in the icy waters of Tundratown?

"Why are you seeking redemption here coon?" the gaunt priest hissed. "Turn to your heathen gods instead, for you will find no forgiveness of your sins in this holy place!" Jake stumbled back in fear when he felt something slither against his legs and looked down to see that a serpent was staring up at him with sinister red eyes which seemed to bore into his very soul. With a scream, he tripped and fell onto the hard tile floor, where he desperately raised his arm in vain to fend off the fangs of the ancient snake god called Ouroboros. The snake bit down hard upon his arm and he could feel the fiery venom as it coursed through his body and with a gasp he sprawled onto the ground. With fading eyes, he watched as the serpent seemed to grow larger as it towered over him and after a flick of its forked tongue, the snake's mouth opened wide as if to swallow the raccoon. Jake closed his eyes as he accepted his doom and waited for his inevitable death.

"Beep…beep…beep!" the raccoon opened his eyes when he heard the rhythmic sound of a machine and saw that he was no longer on the church's floor, but strapped in a hospital bed. The long-dead priest and his serpent god were gone, so wearily he looked around in confusion, and it was then that Jake saw her in the neighboring hospital bed! Desperately he picked the restraints, which held him in place, and with a sob, he ran towards the female raccoon who was straining to breathe even with the ventilator. "Marie!" he cried out as he reached out to touch her.

"You failed her!" a voice laughed and the raccoon turned to see a tall muscular tiger in an expensive black suit towering over him. A patch covered one of the tiger's eyes and he had a crooked grin on his muzzle. "She is going to die, just as you killed me coon!"

"Scareese, you tried to kill me and I was only defending myself!" Jake yelled as the faint memory of their battle on a ledge along a downtown building returned to him. He turned to flee but the gangster quickly lunged towards him and the tiger grabbed the much smaller raccoon by his throat as he lifted him off the hospital floor. Jake struggled as he desperately pounded and tore at the larger cat's choking grip. The tiger just smiled as he squeezed harder and harder, even as the raccoon tried to scream from the pain.

"You killed me!" the tiger growled. "Then you disrespected me even in death. I know what you said to the police officer as they took you away, 'look cats do really land on their paws!' Let's see if raccoons can land on their paws too?" With those words, the tiger smashed Jake through the glass of the nearby window and the raccoon was consumed with fear as he was hurdled downwards toward the pavement below.

Everything became dark around him and he awoke lying in a stinky muddy puddle in a trash-strewn alleyway. Panting, he painfully staggered to stand and wipe the muck from his clothes. Suddenly there was a sound of a bottle rolling on the asphalt and he saw someone standing in the darkness. "Where?" he began to ask and then he realized that it was a familiar-looking fox in a green tropical shirt and mismatched tie. "Nick? Nick, is that you?"

The disheveled looking fox just stood there staring at him with seemingly blank unseeing eyes and then the raccoon stumbled back when he saw, as his best friend raised his arm, that there was rotting fur hanging off the boney paw. "Why didn't you save me?" was all Nick desperately asked before he crumbled into a pile of dust. The raccoon felt dizzy and lightheaded as he fainted from shock at what he had just seen.

When he woke up, Jake found himself in a garden, it wasn't his garden, but he knew it well. He looked down at his paws and discovered he was now much younger and fit, no longer thin and hungry. There was a clinking sound of crockery and the smell of green tea coming from the tea house in front of him. "Grandfather?" he asked when he saw the aged red panda in his ceremonial silk robe sitting there holding a steaming cup of tea. "Please tell me what is happening?"

"Why did you run away?" his one-time spiritual mentor simply asked instead of answering his question. "You could have come to me instead of pushing away all you loved?"

"I was ashamed of what I had become after my father died," Jake answered as he unsteadily stood. "I was homeless…I was angry…I had lost all hope."

"You were too proud to come to me, I went with Sonya to search for you but you were gone. You broke both of our hearts."

"I've lost everything…" Jake began to sob as he dropped down to his knees upon the gravel pathway. "All those who I love are gone! I lost Marie, Nick, Judy, my children…everyone!"

"Do you think we should help him?" the red panda sarcastically asked as he passed a cup of tea over to someone else.

The teahouse's tan paper door was pulled back further to reveal another raccoon sitting there, he turned and looked at him with strange light yellow colored eyes. Jake gave a gasp when he realized that he was looking at himself sitting there in the teahouse. "If I was you…oh wait, I am!" the raccoon in the tea room scoffed. "If I was you, would never again eat pickled herring, raw onion, Limburger cheese, and ketchup on rye bread before taking a nap. Now WAKE UP!"

Jake gasped as he fell off the office chair and panted with relief in the semi-darkened room now that he realized it was all just a nightmare.

The den's door opened and the hallway light illuminated a disheveled looking fox who just stood there staring at him with seemingly blank unseeing eyes and then the raccoon crawled under the old oak desk when he saw, as his best friend raised his arm, there was rotting fur hanging off the boney paw. "No, Nick!" Jake whimpered.

"What, you don't like my zombie costume?" Nick asked before he flipped on the light. "Didn't I show it to you before? You know that I'm working undercover at that commercial haunted house in Heyenahurst which we think is being used as a front for drug distribution."

"It...it's great," Jake answered from where he was hiding. "Very scary."

"Good!" the fox replied. "Hey, I'm hungry. Do you want something to eat?"

"Sure!" the raccoon said as he crawled back to his footpaws. "I wonder if we have any of the pickled herring or Limburger cheese left?"


The False Priest was the villain in Zootopia: A Raccoon's Revenge, he drowned when the thin ice he was standing on broke. "I didn't kill him," Jake told Renato Manchas. "I just didn't save him."

In Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption, the gangster "Scarface" Scareese tried to murder Jake and was instead killed when he chased the nimble raccoon out onto a tall building's ledge. Jake had desperately blinded the tiger with a throwing knife and Scareese missed his step, the tiger plunged to his death.