Life as a penguin was not easy. First your wife left you for an asshole with bigger rocks. Then the fish began being a tad too cold due to global cooling (Humans burned fossil fuels, which should, in theory, warm the atmosphere. What the scientists rarely accounted for was that the atmosphere of Cabaret had staunch contrarianism for a hobby. Thus, sometimes, more greenhouse gases equaled an overall colder planet.), which triggered your tooth sensitivity. Which tooth, you ask? The psychological one: Toot enough and you will soon tooth, they say. And, lastly, one of your distant cousins of the lepidosaurian persuasion descended from the firmament riding a rainbow and donning a snazzy woolen suit, riding his zestful primate, just for the primate to pick you in his strong arms, attach a cold chain around your neck —You cannot adequately define your neck in your reflection, but he somehow can! It’s egregious! — and haul you up the rainbow, over the restless seas, into lands unknown and devoid of the fish you grew up eating.
Life as a penguin was not easy. But kidnapping one from the pole to gift to your friend, when you were as powerful as Cutbastra, was! He weighed almost nothing, honked in protest and didn’t even bite. It was like stealing a pacified toy poodle from a child…ish rich blonde who used it as a purse implement.
He made his way to the cold chamber with the bird in tow and Oracle properly dressed for the job he wanted, not the job he had.
He got past the skulls, ducked under the half-beefs, and fought his way through the sexually predatory turnstiles, having to use the penguin as a flail often. He was sorry for using the bird as an improvised weapon, but the purity of his butt cheeks had been compromised, and no man with blood in his veins would refrain from jumping into action when affronted so shamelessly.
Finally, with his arms full of scratches and a black eye, Cutbastra reached the desk of his friend Horancio, whose skin was blue and his nose host to a shivering family of icicles.
“How the turntables,” said Oracle, not smiling because he wasn’t sure he was physically able to do it.
A crack appeared on the icy cocoon, and like the son of a butterfly and an entomologist yeti, Horancio emerged from his prison, his face red from courage. “Do you have the tiniest idea about how long I have been waiting for you?”
Cutbastra smiled and raised the penguin, pulling him up by the chain. “I brought a gift.”
Or, well, the little blood-dripping stump that used to be the penguin. It ended up like a submarine, in the sense it had not a trace of wings. The Argentinian drink, not the machine that goes underwater in hopes of someday being used by James Cameron: this penguin was clearly not going underwater ever again.
The man’s eyes darted to Oracle’s smug pokerface. “Why are you dressed in a willy warmer?”
Cutbastra gestured at his friend in his pocket. “The ball-cover works like a hoodie!”
“I am a dick at heart,” Oracle told the truth and only the truth. “One day I hope to be paid for it. Being a dick.” He had to summon all of his force of will to avoid licking his eyes.
“I waited for you for seven hours. Seven!”
Cutbastra bowed out of courtesy. “The pet store was closed so I made a little trip.”
Scratching his child-bearing chin, Horancio couldn’t help but asking. “Why a penguin, though?”
Cutbastra joined his hands, and then spread them as a man who is offering something to a stupid child. “Did you ever notice you live inside a fridge?”
Bewildered, Horancio swiveled his head to the sides and gasped. “It must be off then, because I am cooking in here.” A moment of silence spanned. “Of course I know I live in a refrigerator, you moron! Now, follow me. ”
Horancio crouched under his desk, fidgeted a bit with something Cutbastra couldn’t see, and then the sound of creaky hinges betrayed what he was doing.
“Follow me to the ritual chamber downstairs. And be ready to leave your lizard in my care.”
“I prefer to be addressed as his owner, thank you,” said his eminence Oracle.
Cutbastra tapped the skink on the head with just enough strength to not knock him out. “Behave, Oracle.”
In a movement too swift for a man of his dimensions Horancio disappeared under his desk. “Don’t dilly-dally, the spirits are anxious to meet you.”
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Cutbastra expected the secret passage to be not as well lit, but he soon decided it was only logical: a door had been opened, and they were inside a part of a fridge, so it followed that small bulbs lined on the walls would illuminate their descent through the winding stair The steps were covered in a thin layer of ice, which was no frictional impediment to a man as rotund as Horancio. Cutbastra, on the other hand, slipped and descended in record time. Oracle thanked the heavens for the vision that had made him include a little safety belt inside his friend’s pocket. The tangle of man collided against a wall of the big circular chamber, and, coming to his feet, be gasped in awe. Before him , drawn upon the white floor with frost ashes, lay an intricate pattern , a circle filled with a cloud of cursive letters, each word joined to the next. Cutbastra dared trying to read a fragment. His upper lip raised, and sweat gathered on his brow. “Triple Boobed Spermatozoids… what?” Then realization washed upon him, causing hiss limbs to go cold, and his knees weak. “Sodomized gods in heaven, it’s a tag cloud for furry fetishes!”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Horancio began speaking as he descended the last steps, hands still in his deep pockets. “Future Furry Fetishes. Degenerations yet to be. Yesterday, for example, Lung pregnancy was to be found there. Three months ago, ejaculating one’s own skeleton was. Then they…” he made a pregnant pause. Not in the lung, though. “Disappeared. They became Current Furry Fetishes.”
“Duck nipples,” Oracle read aloud. “Just… ducks with tits? seems pretty tame.”
Horancio’s head shook slowly, with a tangible weight to it.
Oracle decided to go for the strategical fainting.
“Goniatitties.” Cutbastra read another. ”What does that even mean?”
“When you don’t understand something, blame STEM folks.” His flabby arm opened slowly to a side, and one of his chubby fingers pointed at a corner of the circular chamber. “put on the ritual veil.
Cutbastra arched his eyebrow as he regarded the purple and green fursuit that lay tidily collected there, with the ethylene-vinyl acetate head depicting a sort of… horse with fetal alcohol syndrome. “Do I really have to get into that?”
“If you don’t, you have made me waste my time. The cold kills fleas, so feel free to put it on.”
“Does it kill STDs?”
Oracle decided he had to hop into the conversation. “My friend, you can cuck herpes itself.”
Cutbastra shoved him back inside the pocket of his shirt. “But one day the illness will mutate a taste for it and I will be dunzo.”
“Listen, put on the suit or get the fuck out of my property. Or are you getting cold feet?”
Cutbastra looked down at his boots and the frozen miasma dancing around them and across the floor of the chamber. The man just pursed his lips and nodded energetically.
“I need to stop punning myself into shame,” the occultist lamented. “Put the suit on, pretty please.”
Cutbastra snapped his fingers and clicked his tongue. “Only because you asked nicely.”
Facing his immediate future filled him with apprehension. The big eyes of the suit drilled into his soul and asked a question he didn’t want to answer: Are you ready to kinkshame the dead?
Was he? HE had always respected his partner’s wishes, remained understanding of the variegated caprices of human sexuality. Sure, he had limits when it came to harmful practices, like anything non-consensual. But as far as he knew, furries where mostly harmless. Mostly.
He picked up the headdress and stared straight into the cartoonish horse’s orbs (and I am calling them orbs just because Cutbastra would hate it) ready to search in his heart of hears and answer such a question.
No. He wasn’t ready. But it had to be done.
“Is the suit special in any way?” he wondered idly, stuffing his hand inside the head through the neck hole. It felt soft and comfy inside. Unlike sticking your head in the innards of an actual furry, which Cutbastra had never done, but could imagine it wouldn’t feel pretty.
“The suit is said to have a will of its own. Some report they have had to battle against it, elst it consumed their minds. I believe that to be poppycock.”
“Ah, that wouldn’t be a problem: I deal with vile voices in my head all the time. My Avatar of the Road is a cunt.”
“What if the suit takes over, though?” asked Oracle, his eyes big with worry.
“You have permission to kill me if that happens, friend,” Cutbastra said, as if Oracle could.
“Reassuring. Truly,” the dick-in-training retorted. “Can I go with him?”
“You’d need to be dressed as an animal.”
“Can I wear a skin suit of that animal?” the skink deadpanned.
“I don’t see why not, but—” Horancio began, only to be cut off by the lizard.
“I am going dressed in a skink’s skin, then.”
The fat occultist groaned. “The heavens won’t be happy with such derision.”
Cutbastra cocked an imaginary gun and raised it next to his real face. “good thing we are going to hell, then.”
Oracle considered reminding his friend that he had real guns stashed inside his pocket dimension. He decided against it: seeing Cutbastra improvise weapons was way funnier than watching him pull a trigger.
“I am ready to face my demons. And kinkshame them. “ the cucktivator said, plugging the purple and green horse head on to test it. HE looked at his hands, the front and the back. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Put on the rest of the suit. It’s easier if you leaqve the… How?”
Cutbasatra finished zippering up suit and shrugged. “Cultivator’s speed mixed with a bandit lover’s urgency to get dressed. What do I do now.”
Horancio stood in front of the tagcloudgram and extended his arms high, palms open as if he expected to catch manna, or falling babies, from heaven. Can you imagine that? a rain of babies? Absolutely deranged concept. I am ruining the life of whomever dares write about that in a three kilometer radius.
I digress.
Horancio raised his hands, icicles dangling from his flabby arms like the wide sleeves of a cultists robe. “Come, Cutbastra, step into the circle of fetishes to be, and enter the place where the ones who dared transcend their humanity rest!”
A timid first step placed Cutbastra’s newly acquired hoof inside the circle, and immediately a sensation akin to electricity traversed his body. His right foot was touching a tag: “Incremental games fertilization”. The concept of it invaded his mind, and he clawed the sides of his head, that thumped like it about to explode. Trying to pull off the suit, he found that it was like trying to peel off one’s own skin. He screamed in pain and kneeled upon more and more words of blower, intensifying the pain, the sensations that made him think his body was being consumed by millions of vicious and small fleas.
Oracle also felt the same sensations. He hummed elevator music as he crawled over a couple tags. “Oh, Avantasia. Good taste, good taste.” he said, slithering aside to not slide over a word he respected so much. Then, he got engulfed by light and the stench of bleach disappearing form sight. Horancio smiled.
A second after, Cutbastra suffered the same fate, and the state of the art in yeti fashion dusted off his hands. “Weirdos.”