Lampago Part I

In a spartan, yet squalid living room of a spartan, yet squalid apartment, a cat poked its head through a gap in the cardboard-sealed window. It oozed onto the filthy yet barren floor, silently skittered towards a duct-tape upholstered couch, and leaped up onto it. The liquid animal seeped in between duct-taped cushions, and disappeared. Behind that miserable, tape-mummified couch in that miserable living room was a door leading to a miserably small bedroom.

Dominating that miserably cramped bedroom was a dilapidated mattress. Flanking that dingy mattress was a lamp-adorned fruit crate its owner pretended was a nightstand. A beat-up vanity dress with a cracked mirror sat on the far side of the bedroom (if the room could be called that) as though to distance itself from that farce of a decorative afterthought.

A large, redheaded man, no, a living, breathing mountain in pajamas, lay asleep on that miserable mattress. On the crescendo of the mountain's snoring, a button popped off of his pajama shirt, allowing a meadow of thick, white hair to blossom across his vast chest. A thin, little boy, too petite to be called "bony," lay nestled deep in a valley formed in the crook of his brother's massive arm.

The mountain instinctively press the boy close to him in a hug. He then placed his shaggy, paw-hand over the boy's maimed right hand. With his swollen thumb, the mountain gingerly stroked his brother's scar-puckered knuckles near where the boy's fingers once were. The mountain yawned a mighty, rumbling yawn as another button popped off, turning his meadow of white into a hairy avalanche of snow that flowed up his bull neck to splash against his craggy chin.

Clutching his whimpering brother to his vast, shaggy chest, the mountain sat up. He pivoted towards his pretend-nightstand, and planted his big, shaggy, bedroom slippers-esque feet squarely on the floor. The mountain let his brother lay in his lap as he switched on the lamp, their mother's lamp. He fumbled for, then fumbled with a plastic phial with his shaggy paw-hands before finally prying that infernal, child-proof lid off with a horn-colored talon that slid cleanly out of the broad tip of his sausage finger.

"Hey Dunc, Duncan," the mountain cooed. "You need your pills."

He stroked Duncan's sand-colored hair. Duncan pried his mouth open a crack to let his brother put his pills in. The mountain then put a water bottle to his brother's lips for the obligatory swig. The mountain slurped down the rest of the water to wash his own pills down. He let Duncan lie back down onto the mattress.

The mountain, in turn, got up out of bed, and shambled towards the door. He shot a brief, venomous glare at the beastly reflection in his cracked vanity mirror.

"Get a life, ugly," he snarled.

In his short death march to the bathroom, the mountain didn't notice, or rather didn't care, that a thin tail was successfully fighting its way out of a tear in the seat of his pajama pants. He was too busy remembering a time when he still looked human, no a time when he still was human. Back in the glory days as a globetrotting photojournalist, just after his glory days as an all-star college athlete. He remembered that glorious day when he was called into his editor's office to receive his "greatest assignment ever."

"Rudy, my son," Rudy remembered his editor saying. "You're heading an expedition to Yunnan, China to document the Maohu People."

Rudy remembered laughing upon accepting that assignment. No reason really: he was a big laugher in those days. The mountain scowled as he banished that awful memory from his shaggy head.

Rudy stood before his bathroom sink, reluctantly facing down his reflection. Once upon a time, long, long ago, the mountain adored primping and preening and posing in front of his reflection wherever he met it. Those glorious days were so long ago now (but not long ago enough, in the mountain's personal opinion). He stared at that mirror, studying how his scruffy beard and fluffy muttonchops were smothering his once-handsome, once-human face. He never was pleased how his luxurious facial fur made everyone think he was some sort of elderly hipster-yeti, either.

Rudy gently traced the thick tip of his sausage finger around the outline of the reflection of his face, hoping to numb his urge to thrust his ham-like paw-hand through the mirror. He watched his hairy, hair-filled ears growing bigger, steadily emerging from his fluffy sideburns.

It was coming, he realized.

With that realization, the rest of Rudy's pajama buttons popped off as his mighty chest barreled out. A great, seething sea of thickening white fur flowed uninterrupted from his chin down across his mighty chest to his groin.

It would soon be here in... Rudy's tail began slapping against the linoleum of the bathroom floor as he tabulated how much time he had left. When he arrived at a figure of 13 hours, the shoulder seams his pajama shirt gave out, finally setting his forest-like mane of red fur loose.

Rudy's scowl softened into a sly smirk. If there was one benefit to it, even if it was the only benefit, it was the soul-boiling exhilaration he got from being filled to literal bursting with overflowing power. If he could come back from having his arm, hands, and legs torn off while being filled with ninety bullets, he could get over some silly, existential angst in the morning. He had to. He needed to, for Duncan's sake.

The mountain focused on its, no, his surging power, and felt his mighty, might-deformed body swell up ever so slightly. He grinned a fangy grin as the bulging muscles of his monster's arm disintegrate the thin fabric of his sleeves. The seams of his pajama pants split open in response to his shifting thighs, vomiting forth fountains of more red fur as they tore apart. As he finally sloughed off the last tatters of his ruined pajamas, he stood there in his bathroom, balancing on his tiptoes, no, standing on his hindlegs.

There, leaning on that miserable sink, in front of that miserable bathroom mirror, was an odd-looking, broad-shouldered, rat-tailed big cat, cloaked in a cape-like mane of red fur and a snow-colored belly, wearing a grinning man's face. Duncan, half-asleep, shambled into the bathroom, and wedged himself comfortably between his brother's belly fur and the rim of the sink. As Duncan armed himself with his toothbrush, Rudy delicately squeezed out a drop of toothpaste for him. The mountain tousled his brother's sandy hair with his great paw.

"Morning, Sparky," Rudy greeted. Duncan grumbled-gurgled in response. The mountain reached for his electric razor, putting it to his fur-hidden chin. After all, it was time for the mountain to don his human disguise.