I was going to kill that motherfucking alarm some day.

It rang for a couple minutes before I finally had to acknowledge I wasn’t getting back to sleep. Some genius had decided to put her phone on the desk across the room, so that she’d have to get out of bed to hit the snooze button. I’d been told I had issues with self esteem, usually I thought that was bullshit but now I realised it was true. There was no way I would have done this unless I hated myself.

I growled long and deep as I uncurled, walked over to my desk and jumped on the chair, the force of the impact spinning it around to face the desk again, then slapped a paw on the phone in the hope that it might snooze itself. Nothing happened, obviously. Touch screens were made to be used by human hands only, which was pretty much a hate crime.

I pushed outwards with every part of my body at once, felt myself stretch and elongate. Thick, warm fur thinned and receded like a banker going through his midlife crisis in fast motion, including a pretty good analogy for the combover of shame as I somehow ended up with a hideous mop of bed hair, plus some serious regret over the decision to put a mirror in my bedroom. Teeth blunted and shrank, claws smooshed outwards to become broad and dull, and I almost fell off the chair as my centre of gravity shifted.

But I had hands. Hands were awesome.

I spent half an hour in the shower, letting the hot water wash the glugginess from my head, let myself drip dry, then got dressed in a t-shirt and shorts that I’d found lying on my bedroom floor. Couldn’t remember how long they’d been there, but they didn’t stink and there weren’t any visible bits of food on them, which was good enough for me. I was happy to take my time with the whole process, since the bathroom had crappy ventilation, otherwise known as awesome ventilation, and got totally steamed up whenever the shower was run, so it was like having my own private sauna.

Finally I emerged from my tepid swamp, feeling a lot like that first idiot fish that decided to grow legs and crawl out of the water, so that in ten million years its descendents would have to file tax returns. Unlike that scaly bastard, though, I found the table had been set for me while I was showering, with a bowl and a spoon on a nice clean placemat, with a box of cereal and a carton of milk next to it. Grace was a morning person. I’d been born into a world of magic and monsters, seen horrors that were never meant to be and witnessed the deepest depravities of the human soul, but I’d still never encountered anything else quite as chillingly unnatural as a morning person.

I wasn’t hungry yet, but since she’d gone to all the effort I felt like I had to have at least some breakfast. I knew that was why she did it, the conniving little weasel, but that didn’t make the guilt trip any less effective. At least I was capable of one small act of rebellion. I drizzled honey all over my Grainy Bites, completely ruining the nutritional balance of the meal, and left the honey out so that she’d know what I’d done once she came back from her morning run.

Once I was done, I went to put the dirty bowl into the sink, and saw on the microwave’s clock that it was already nine. Shit. In theory campus was only a ten minute drive away, but the roads got pretty busy this time in the morning, so if the traffic was really bad it could take twice that long. I skipped brushing my teeth (I’d skipped doing it in the evening a few days ago, so together those basically cancelled out) and rushed out to the car. It was a heap of junk in a very stylish shade of lime green, but I liked it. It was like an old pair of underpants - familiar, comfortable, and you didn’t have to wash it often because you knew the mysterious stains wouldn’t come out anyway.

The roads turned out to be mostly clear, which was a small mercy, but the carpark was full, so that was probably because I was late enough to have missed rush hour. In the end I had to park on a nearby street instead, and the only spot I could find there was barely big enough to fit my car, which meant I had no choice but to try parallel parking. I reversed my way in, slow and steady, then once my finely honed instincts told me it was time, I straightened up and ended up parked perfectly, aside from the fact that I was about two metres off the side of the road.

“How in the fucking ass-crap,” I said sagely.

I shifted forwards, reversed at an angle to wiggle closer in, shifted forwards to straighten up, reversed back at an angle, shifted forwards to straighten up, and found that I was now stuck between the two cars at a 90 degree angle, with my car sticking out even further into the road than it had been before, and also twenty minutes late for class.

Screw it. I was acutely aware that nobody was watching, since I’d been checking every mirror constantly to make sure there wasn’t a studio audience laughing at me somewhere, so I hopped out of the car, took another furtive glance around the area, then hooked a hand underneath the hood so I could lift the front half of the car a hair off the ground and rotate it into position. It was still parked messily, but at least it wouldn’t be catching any incoming traffic now, so I quit while I was only a bit behind and started jogging classwards.

I was half an hour late in the end, to a two hour long class, which wasn’t great but wasn’t the end of the world either. I might have even been happy about it, since the course was a pretty dull one about how to check sources and smell bullshit, but Reece taught it well. He was big on class discussions, and had an uncanny ability to turn them into actual back-and-forth conversations that everybody participated in and got something out of. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it first-hand.

They were in the middle of one of those discussions when I arrived. After quietly slipping into my seat and listening in for a few minutes, I figured out the gist of it. It wasn’t a topic that was on the syllabus, so it was probably one of those discussions that started from someone asking a semi-related question. People were arguing about what exactly the moral obligations of the media should be and what an editor should do to uphold them, which was an important if depressing conversation to have. Not very relevant to me though, since that was all high-concept stuff that the people in charge decided and then dictated to their minions, and I wasn’t exactly leadership material.

Reece looked at me. “Alex, you’ve been quiet so far. I know you missed some of the discussion, but any thoughts?”

I could say no to that question. That was one of the first things he’d told us, that participation was good but nobody should ever feel pressured into it. But the ingenious part about it was, that was exactly why I didn’t want to say no. If there was one lesson I’d learned in my life, it was that no goatee-stroking villain could ever be half as devious as a genuinely nice person trying to help.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Having principles is good and all, but I figure if someone comes to you with an interview they did with a serial killer, that story’s going to get out one way or another, even if you refuse to run it. If you publish it, then at least you get to control the spin. Make sure it doesn’t romanticise them, or have detailed instructions on how to lure someone into your murder-van.”

“Just tell them not to do that stuff if you don’t want them to. You’re their boss.” That was typical fucking Dave. If you took the words ‘well actually’, turned them into a person, and then hit that person in the head with a mallet until it didn’t have two functioning brain cells left, you’d end up with someone who was still a lot more fun to talk to than Dave. I’d learned the hard way, over and over again, that there was absolutely no point in responding to him.

So obviously I proceeded to do exactly that.

“You can’t micromanage every single part of someone’s job. People are going to make decisions of their own whether you like it or not.”

“You can still tell them not to interview serial killers.”

“That’s not the point. There are so many ways someone could do something ethically sketchy while working for you, you can’t ban every single one.”

This seemed to stump him for a moment, but then he came up with a new plan of attack. “What’s so bad about interviewing a serial killer anyway? I’ve seen shows where they interviewed serial killers.”

I could have torn him limb from limb right there and then. I’d never actually ripped a human limb off before, but from my experiences with human-like things, it would only take a quick, firm tug. Unfortunately, I was cursed with this stupid conscience that made me do dumb stuff like ‘care about other people’ and ‘not commit random acts of murder’. My life would be so much simpler if I could cure myself of that.

Instead I said in an extremely patient voice, “The hypothetical was about someone using a source you couldn’t morally condone. A serial killer was a random example. If you don’t agree with that example, pretend I said something else.”

“We’re getting off track here, and we should be moving on to our next exercise,” Reece said, before Dave could come up with another braindead response. “Good points though, everybody! Now before we do move on, can I get a show of hands from everybody who did this week’s readings?”

I raised my hand, took a deep breath, and tried as hard as I could to focus on the cornucopia of person and classroom scents instead of on the mental image of punching Dave’s big dumb face. It mostly worked.

I’d never seen Morgan’s house before last week, and now I was already there, along with Luke, for my second visit, this time for a sleepover of all things. Very high school, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We weren’t all that close, but she seemed like a good kid, and I was partly responsible for what happened to her, so I figured I’d help out. Plus, I needed a distraction from the feeling of horrible rotting death that was spreading through my body, and this seemed as good as any. The full moon wasn’t fully risen yet, but it would be soon, and that meant slipping on the aconite bracelet - the second worst fashion accessory ever invented, just after clogs.

Theoretically, keeping in contact with aconite was only meant to suppress all my werewolfy parts so I didn’t do anything stupid during the full moon. But since life sucks and everything always goes wrong somehow, it also made me feel nauseous and made it hard to breathe properly. Neither of those would have been too unbearable by itself, but both of them together, combined with the absolute patheticness of being stuck at regular human strength, sucked like a...

Crap, I couldn’t even think of a good analogy, that’s how bad it was.

The one part about it that I could be very slightly grateful for was that it made my sense of smell drop down to regular human level too. Which also sucked a whole lot, because losing an entire sense is disorienting and claustrophobic, but smell being a sense you couldn’t shut off was a problem sometimes. I’d unintentionally invaded a lot of peoples’ privacy with my nose, I knew personal things about most of my friends that they probably didn’t want me knowing. Plus, people smelling so damn tasty meant I had to keep snacking throughout the day so I didn’t drool on anybody. I had slightly more self control than the average four year old, so it wasn’t like I’d ever actually take a bite out of someone, but it still felt a little weird when you were trying to help someone in need but your nose kept interrupting to tell you how delicious they’d be.

Though that probably wouldn’t have been an issue today anyway. Morgan’s dad, Samir, had been over-the-top hospitable. He’d turned out to be exactly the kind of guy you’d expect to bring up a kid like Morgan. Very nice, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. And also a very good cook, so by the time Luke and I were shown to the spare room we’d be sleeping in, I was pretty sure I’d start uncontrollably projectile-vomiting if someone so much as whispered the word ‘food’. Eating a lot while actively poisoning myself might not have been the single smartest idea that I’d ever had.

So that all left me lying on a couch under a borrowed blanket, stuck in a body that didn’t have fur, nursing an upset tummy and generally feeling like complete and absolute butts, which was probably a good metaphor for that whole high school sleepover experience, as well as not being very conducive to getting to sleep. But I hadn’t been able to get to sleep by myself for years, so that was okay. I’d always maintained that the best way to address your issues was to balance them out with a second, more exciting set of issues.

At least I didn’t have to spend too long lying there feeling sorry for myself before Luke and Morgan were both asleep. It was a very faint pressure on the fabric of reality - not just on the world, because even though it was faint, you could feel that if the whole world disappeared, that pressure would still be there. And it wasn’t the pressure that I felt, exactly. More like when you were on a trampoline and somebody else climbed on with you. You couldn’t feel the other person, but you could feel the way the world shifted around you to accommodate their presence. Also it was less a single discrete pressure and more a mass of eels, each wriggling around on its own path but always remaining part of the whole. Except without the implied slimy unpleasantess of a mass of eels, so maybe a writhing mound of spaghetti, though the implications of that were just plain weird.

Point was, it was hard to describe.

Using magic, on the other hand, was the simplest thing in the world. Magic was everywhere, in everything and everyone. It was no different to using a muscle to move your own body. All you had to do was want to use it and that desire got transmitted outwards, spreading through magic itself and forcing the world to change accordingly. I reached out and grabbed at the two mounds of eel-spaghetti, then pulled. That motion dragged them in towards each other, converging on the central point between them - me.

I took in a deep breath, slowly so I could savour it. Spring flowers, petrichor, bacon in the pan, salty sea air, home after you’d been away too long. After some consideration I settled on petrichor. It was pleasant but not overpowering, and it wasn’t too personal for the others to appreciate it. I remembered soft, grassy earth beneath my feet. A tranquil pond with flowers settled on its surface, from a painting I’d seen once. A mountain peak with clouds spread out below it, and the vivid pinks and oranges of the sky at sunset. And to round it out, the gentle chirping of distant cicadas.

I put myself in front of Luke and Morgan, who were relaxing in the grass beside the pond. “Welcome to the dream,” I told them with a smile. “How do you like it?”