Author’s introduction

Sometimes we write to tell a story. Sometimes we write as therapy. Sometimes we write because we can’t get whatever it is out of our heads any other way. In this case, I wrote as therapy.

My last living grandmother had recently passed on to whatever comes next after losing a battle to E-coli. There’s more to it than that, but it’s not for this venue. It felt like my entire world went crazy for a bit, like I’d lost control over, well, everything. So, I wrote this as a bit self-therapy…and it did help. Anyway, enough of my wandering thoughts and on to the story!

Note: All characters in this story are entirely of my own imagination. Any similarity to actual people, living or dead, is purely a coincidence.

And the story…

K. Kaze Fox

2,300 words

LOST IT

by K. Kaze Fox

I sighed as the door to my “room” opened with the distinct sound of the high security lock releasing. Looking over, I saw the doctor enter, instinctively trying to get up, the restraints pinning me to the bed making sure I stayed exactly where I was. I sighed again, trying to blow an errant hair from my face while I waited for the orderly or doctor to come in. I didn’t wait long as a huge male wolf walked in and stood next to the door, his hand resting threatening on a stun baton on his belt.

Following him was a lithe feline wearing a lab coat and looking at me, her grey-striped face looking worried. Her long, black hair was in a braid extending down to her mid back. She was tall and graceful, showing she worked out, and moved with grace beyond that of even her feline heritage, like she was a martial artist. She spoke with a slightly foreign accent, smiling warmly. “Good morning, Jade. I’m Doctor Papova. How are we doing today?”

“I…I’m here, Doc.” I blew at the hair again, getting annoyed.

“Well, yes you are. Do you realize you had a violent night?” I shook my head before she stilled it with a gentle paw on my vulpine muzzle. She carefully moved the hair away from my face and smiled gently. “Do you think we are safe to get those off of you now?”

I nodded. “Please, Doctor Popova. I’m going crazy here.” She couldn’t help but laugh as she used the magnetic key to start unlocking my restraints. She took a step back, extending her hand for me. I took it and slowly got to my hind paws and stretched and accidentally caught her lab coat, which caused the wolf to start to draw the baton.

She shook her head, made a small gesture toward the wolf and getting him to relax. Then, she took a seat at the little desk in the room, pulled out her tablet and a stylus. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that an ungainly vixen like you is also a fighter.”

I giggled and looked around. “Yeah, I know.” Looking up at the wolf, I smiled sweetly. “I’m fine, I promise. I won’t do anything that could get me in trouble.” With his sour look, I put my paws on my hips. “Could you at least get me breakfast?” With a glance at the doctor for confirmation, he stepped through the door, leaving it open. I ran through some stretches to try to get my stiff joints to function correctly, slowly regaining my grace.

Dr. Popova watched me carefully while I moved, relaxed in the chair as she saw me stretch, jump, and dance along the minuscule floorspace provided me in this cell that the hospital has the audacity to call a room. I finally stopped and looked toward the mirror imbedded in the wall. Through the scratched Plexiglas, I saw my own form, and all I saw was a complete wreck of a three-tailed half-kitsune.

I tried to straighten my long, blue-black hair, but it blatantly refused to stay. My fur, patterned with grey on my back, an orange-red boundary and white belly, looked matted and disheveled instead of my normal, well tendered coat. My normally athletic body looked absolutely gaunt in the oversized canvas hospital gown, making me depressed as I looked at myself. Even my three tails were dragging. I really felt a shell of my former self, a ghost.

“So, care to tell me what’s going on?”

With a deep breath, I started my story.

For the most part, my childhood sucked but certainly wasn’t the worst there was. My father was delusional, erratic, and sometimes prone to violence, but over all he wasn’t a bad guy. My mother was just a typical vixen, or that’s at least how she presented. She was a kitsune, which is why I’m a mixed breed. For the most part, Mom did her best to take care of me and my brother and sister, but it was sometimes quite difficult when Dad was in a state. I could often lean on my grandmother for guidance when my mom wasn’t available, and she was

For a number of years, from about two to ten years old, I was separated from the family by the government. They felt that my father’s mental problems were dangerous for a kit like me, so they took me away from my parents and into the foster system. If they didn’t know was that the male in that house was an evil, evil cat. He tortured me day in and…tortured me in an entirely different way at night.

When I was finally reunited with my true family, after years and years of legal fighting, I kept what happened silent. There was nothing I could do about it nor was there any good that could come of me saying anything, or so I thought. What bothered my parents the most was how I would react like a rabid feral when they touched me and would always keep my back to a wall. I guess I sometimes react like that to this day.

I barely graduated high school and, well, didn’t really start taking college classes until a decade later, after I nearly worked the fur off my paws.High stress, high anxiety… I was probably already on the verge of snapping and this was just the last several years.

I glanced at Dr. Papova. “I realize that’s not really relevant, but…” I sighed, shaking my head as the wolf brought in the tray of scrambled eggs, bacon, and a small container of milk, and set it on the bed. I sat down and pulled the tray onto my lap, glancing at the wolf. “No fork? You want me to eat scrambled eggs without a fork?” The doctor gave him a stern look until he produced the plastic fork for me. I ate quickly trying to ignore the wolf, who kept the sun baton half-drawn from his holster.

Dr. Papova smiled after I finished eating and set the disposable tray, with the fork laid across it, aside. The orderly picked up the tray and took it out as Dr. Papova addressed me. “Now that you’ve finished eating, care to go on?”

I nodded and took a breath, continuing fleshing out my background.

So, where things started getting worse as the beginning of June. While I was traveling for work and stressed trying to do schoolwork at the same time, I received a call on my personal comm. It was my father, who told me that my grandmother was extremely sick. Given that this was my father who called me, the first thing I did was call my grandmother and confirm she was sick, which she confirmed. That hurt me and screwed me up bad. Well, let me step backward about a dozen meters.

For about two months before this, I was on edge. I was giving a presentation the end of May, in the huge Yashol office, on a subject I knew very well. What I don’t do well is talk to large groups. Okay, let’s be completely honest here. I get anxious addressing a group of three, and there were at least fifty in the room I gave my talk in. I’d been tense for months and completely panicked the week of the bed. So, I felt like pieces of my head were breaking as I walked up and started addressing the audience. The presentation was a whole ten minutes, and went over well, but it was also the longest ten minutes of recent memory.

Once done with that, I ended up going to my hotel and collapsing with the help of some anxiety medicine. I slept hard for most the night, waking up a few times from memories of being a kit in that foster home again. I hate to admit it, but I have nightmares of waking up in that place quite often and I have for most of my life. From there, I flew home long enough to do laundry, then flew to New Jexon out west for some much needed training. Gotta love being in the law enforcement field and having to learn new equipment to access systems people don’t necessarily want me to access.

The training went well, which was not much of a surprise. I had already had a chance to mess with the code breaker… I shouldn’t have said that. Anyway, needless to say, I’d already worked with the device, so I was really there just to get my certification so I could testify in court regarding the device, it’s usage, and accuracy. You know, expert witness stuff. I was about ready to come home, my last night in New Jexon, when my father called me and told me about my grandmother. From that point, forward, it felt like I was walking in a daze.

I got home the next day, but I don’t remember the trip. Well, it’s more like I was told about the trip, not that I experienced it. In fact, I only start remembering, really remembering anything, about a week later. It’s like that whole week I was gone and came back to, well, reports of what I was supposed to have done.

I looked back at Dr. Papova. “I guess it sounds kind of funny.” I chuckled a bit nervously. “Who has to go through reading a report of what they did?”

“It’s not all that disturbing, Jade. Especially from what you described. Is this the first time?”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s the first time I got reports on what I was supposed to have done, but it’s not the first time that I’ve…” I looked up, searching for the right word, pausing for a moment. “That I’ve gone away for a while.” I glanced back at her and she nodded, smiling. “I guess I’m just nuts, huh?”

“I’ll reserve judgement. But, we still need to get to how you got here.” She looked reassuringly at me.

I smiled gently then turned my muzzle back to the window, momentarily focusing on the metal mesh to prevent me from opening the window in an attempt to jump four stories down to escape, one way or another. Then I glanced out at the forest in the distance, ordering my thoughts yet again.

The next few weeks seemed to show improvement. Honestly, I thought she was going to get better, make a full recovery. But, the end of June, not but three days after her birthday, she passed in her sleep. It’s like my whole world shattered. I don’t remember much after that, just like a few photographs of the funeral, of work. It was like I was never there, like I was viewing the world through an old video, not even through a holo system.

That was, of course, until, well, I guess it was yesterday but it feels like it was a couple weeks ago. Anyway, I just remember coming to and it was a jolt. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. Honestly, I can’t tell exactly what lead up to it, but what I do remember is coming too with my service weapon in my paws and a thirty-something black-and-white cat looking like he was about to wet his pants. Another unit grabbed my weapon out of my paws and forced me to sit down in my car, yelling at the cat to leave. Next thing I know, I was thrown into a strait jacket and put in the back of a cruiser. Then, well, I woke up here.

I looked over to the doctor, almost pleading. She smiled gently. “Well, I think you might suffer from trauma-induced multiple personalities. There’s two ways of handling the problem.” I nodded, trying to encourage her to continue. “First, we can either try to re-integrate you into a single personality, or we can try to get enough communications between the two that you can function normally out in society.”

“Wh…which is the better way to go?” I knew, absolutely knew that my career is completely done at this point.

“I’m not sure. We’ll see what you seem to respond better to, and I’ll need to talk to the other parts of you to figure out what all of you agree to.”

I nodded and sighed heavily as I looked down. “I guess my life’s pretty much over, huh?”

With a shake of her head and a flick of her tail. “Absolutely not. You’ll spend some time here, and you’ll get back to a stable point. No one is pressing charges for what happened, so all you need to do is focus of finding stability inside yourself.” I nodded, looking down as I heard her rustling and get up. The orderly opened the door, still eying me warily. “That’s enough for today. You have computer access here,” she motioned to the computer, “with some monitored Starnet access. There is also a private journal. While I won’t require you to write in it, I think it’d be a good idea.”

“Yes, Doctor. Thank you.” She nodded and was out the door, the sounds of the high security bolts sealing me in the last I heard. I stared at the desk for a few minutes, then touched the glowing square to activate it, and started writing.

Now it’s our turn….