“Alright, that is the last of the supplies we should need for now.” Grabbing the bag from the cashier at the gardening store. It was filled with over a dozen different seeds, the basics from corn and grain to cucumbers and strawberries. The variety was enough to fill the farm come March, while by the next planting season in Summer another variety could refill the farms. It would be enough, if not too much work for the three of us.
“We need to get home now.” John turned to the East, staring past the building and in the direction of the woods. It appeared something was wrong with the camp or worse Nate.
“What is going on?” I tried to see what John was seeing but like usual his mind was still a foggy mess. I hope Myc was able to fix that sooner or later, it was worrying knowing that his mind was never truly whole. Especially because of something that Nate and I dragged him into.
It seems that people were seen by the camp. Nate attempted to get them to leave, unfortunately he did not heed my advice. He and the people are safe but it is a problem that will need to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
“God dammit Nate.” We grabbed the nearly dozen bags and started a fast jog, directly to the camp. Myc explained that apparently some hikers or something were trouncing around looking for a secluded spot to set up. Nate without paying attention was messing with some of Myc’s newer abilities. Nate tried to explain away the tail, growing bone tools, and reptile scales. He fumbled around a couple excuses and one thing led to another, and now they were apparently tied up in my cabin. “Why did he have to put them in my cabin?”
“What will we do with them?”
“Well we aren’t going to kill them.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Just making sure, anyway I don’t know this is one of those bad to worse situations. Myc?”
Hmmm, other than asking them to join our little society I am not sure. We could try to convince them it was a dream, although that may seem far fetched now. Electroshock therapy has seen some positive results in erasing memories.
“Yeah. How confident are you doing so without frying their brains?”
Perhaps a 2 out of 10. Even if I tried and succeeded it would most likely cause near total amnesia. However, that would be better than them finding out our secret and being unwilling to stay.
“We are not frying their brains. Okay maybe we can convince them that Nate is a freak, genetically strange, prehensile tails are rare but they do exist. Bone tools could be a trick like disappearing cards and reptile scales, a trick of the light?”
The scales were extremely colorful, he requested something that changed colors in the light. It was a difficult notion but going off octopus camouflage and butterfly wings I was able to make a set of complex muscles that mildly shifted microscopic scales. Set just right they would change based on the viewing angle or if the muscles were set correctly allow blending into the environment. I must say although not many of the changes Nate asks for are entirely useful, many of them are challenging and do create new scenarios to practice.
“Yeah, fascinating. First let's deal with the consequences then you can tell me all about the flamboyant project that is going to get us figured out.” It was actually a fascinating concept, using the lenses to change the color that light reflects. However, the more pressing matters had to be dealt with first, like how to get a group of hikers to never mention a strange group of people living out in the woods.
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Hmm, perhaps we can believe that they ate poisonous mushrooms. This could all be a hallucinogenic trip that ends with them dehydrated and on the edge of the woods. I can actually make the mushrooms to feed to them, we leave them to trip out for a few hours. Dump them on the side of the road, with a few extra mushrooms to confirm their suspicions. Hopefully they go and leave us alone and if they come back we go full forest demon on them.
“The mushroom thing isn’t all that bad.” Maybe a little cruel, but no long-term side effects, should hopefully keep them away from this spot. Could be used again in the future if needed and all the weird things they saw would be discounted as hallucinations. “Alright, let's go with that if we can’t convince them Nate is just some freak of nature.”
We headed up to the camp, Nate was there pacing around the central fire pit, biting his nails. He hadn’t done that since our parents died, it was a little nervous tic of his when he first started middle school. So John and I rushed to see what the situation was with our own eyes. Nate freaked when the first saw us, the usual thoughts of more people, cops, and my inevitable punishment went through his head.
“Cat, hey. So some things happened while you and John were out.” He continued the nervous nail biting, he couldn’t sit still.
“We know, John saw and Myc told me. Why the hell is your second reaction to tie them up and put them in my cabin?” I was trying not to sound too motherly, but it was hard when Nate was acting like a child that just broke a vase.
“I don’t know, I panicked, and Myc tried to get me to ask for help. But I wanted to show you I was responsible, and they saw the tail and scales and, and, and.” His tail was fluffed up and jittering like a cat’s, although I didn’t need it to tell me Nate was freaking out.
“Relax, we have a few ideas to try. Best case scenario we drug them and dump their unconscious bodies by the road.”
“You mean worst case, right.” Nate looked at John nervously, it seemed he was even less in tune with our connection than I was. Granted the same dull expression on John’s face all the time made it hard to tell what the guy was thinking.
“The plan is to try to convince them that what they saw here was just a physically deformed and mentally unstable kid. If they don’t believe that, then we drug them with hallucinogenic mushrooms.”
“Just let me talk to them.” Leaving the duo to contemplate their bad ideas, I headed over to my little cabin. “Dammit they probably got the rug all dirty, and he better not have put them on my bed.”
Looking inside the dim cabin, there were five people, sitting with their backs to each other. Blindfolded and tied up, they were all muttering to each other, bickering about an escape plan or the ‘monster’ they saw outside. I decided direct but apologetic was the best way to convince these people we weren’t going to eat them. I learned that little trick from Myc, apparently being forced to infect two people gives you plenty of practice.
“Hello, I am Catherine, I want to apologize for what happened here.” Taking the blind fold off the first person, attempting to relieve them of any thoughts of a slow death. “Look my brother isn’t exactly normal but he isn’t a monster.”
“Cat, Cat is that you?” Taking the blind fold off revealed it was Sarah Clemence. When I had time, I went to a few classes in the local community college, slowly building credits. Sarah was going for a law degree, so we sat next to each other in a few classes. She wanted to be an attorney working pro bono, her focus was on environmental impact studies and the like. Unfortunately it seemed Myc had undid all of his changes while we were running back to camp.
“Shit. Hi, Sarah. How are you doing today?” This was bad, really bad to be honest. Me and Sarah weren’t best friends, hell we barely talked to each other outside of class. Unfortunately I was almost positive she had seen Nate before, he came to the college to drop off books since I had to work late.
“What the hell is going on? I mean we thought you were dead or skipped town. Ever since all that shit went down with Matthew.” Crap, we had looked around town, no newspapers had said anything about me, Nate, or Matthew. I was hoping that nobody knew we were connected to their disappearances, unfortunately small towns, news traveled through gossip rather than the written word.
“No well, you see me and Nate were just…camping?”
I do not think that will work, perhaps we should try my method now.
“We are not going to drug them.” Sarah looked at me wide eyed, I had to stop talking to Myc out loud.
“What the hell is going on Cat. Seriously I mean I know you were struggling with Nate and all but killing us. I mean seriously we won’t tell anyone about, you know, whatever this is.” She looked around the small cabin. It felt kind of judgmental to be honest, I mean I know it wasn’t even a four star resort but still. The rug on the ground was a simple dark brown, to hide any dirt stains, the walls were draped with lilac colored sheets. Even the few stacked sheets that I was sleeping on were a dull green, it made the room colorful but not overbearing.
“We are not going to kill you, seriously we just might have to drug you on some psychedelic mushrooms and leave you by the road.”
“Holy shit, what the hell is going on here?” Sarah was pretty shocked, the others seemed more or less the same. It was hard to explain and the longer they stayed here the more likely they were to remember anything even after a heavy trip.
I suggest telling them now, we will gauge their reactions and if they seem scared or unwilling we will drug those. If any seem actually willing or curious we will tell them of the options and see what happens from there.
“Okay, alright. Let me just tell you guys what is happening here. We aren’t going to hurt you and we definitely aren't going to kill you. Once we tell you, you’ll understand why we can’t just let you go. So basically we are trying to create something new and wonderful, it all started when…”