Hurricane #1: The Dream (Patreon)

The scent is there but dull, hard to track, dilute from the torrential rain pouring from dark grey clouds. Don’t lose it. Breathe deep. Orient yourself. Down the street, around the corner. Your home must be there. It must be. Over the creek.

Impossibly, the rain picks up, even harder, faster, colder. It soaks through your fur. But now, other noises pierce the sound of the storm. Angry howls. Warbles. Barks.

The two-legged creatures round the street ahead of you, framed in moonlight, and you come to a halt, one paw raised. One of them points at you, and barks again. “There she is!”

No, not barking, speaking. Words. Why can’t you speak back? You don’t have arms and hands. You have four legs, four paws. Why? Were you always like this? You try to call back. I’m like you. I’m like you. The words form in your head, but in the driving rain they turn to yips and snarls.

Now they’re around you, three of them, grabbing you, lifting you up, avoiding your claws, your teeth. A feline looks into your face and yells: “Just a branch!”

You squirm and wiggle and snap, but you barely hear your snarls over the storm, barely hear his screaming. The rain has become a torrential squall, the creek a furious whitewater river.

They throw you in. Fierce currents rip at you, drag you under. You frantically paddle, try to howl, but just get a mouthful of water. The world is nothing but the storm, all-consuming, unmoved by your helplessness, driving you faster and faster. Driving you against the rocks—

Serrano rolled onto her side, gasping raggedly for breath, then sat up in bed. “Three Lords.” She wiped her muzzle with the back of a paw, half-expecting it to come away dripping with rainwater.

The bedside alarm clock hadn’t lit up for years. She slapped around for the light switch, then squinted against the shock of sudden illumination. Quarter to four. Again.

She rubbed her face, then tilted a big triangular ear. Did she hear running water?

Grunting, she threw off the bed cover and padded into the bathroom, flipping on the vanity mirror lights. Two of the five bulbs lit up, down one from this morning. Great. They illuminated her well enough to show her haggard expression, but also well enough to show that yes, she was a coyote person, two arms and hands and two legs, not an unevolved coyote. Not that she’d doubted, but the dream hadn’t done her the service of fading quickly yet, and everything felt just a little—off.

And sure enough, she heard running water, almost the same sound she’d heard from the river in the damn dream. But the faucet wasn’t on; the sink remained dry.

She pulled back the shower stall’s curtain, looking down at the permanently grimy tiles. Water filled the bottom, as if she’d left the shower on full blast. A whirlpool circled the drain. But she didn’t see so much as a drip from the shower head.

She tightened the handles anyway, watching the water spiral away with a wet sucking sound. Had someone broken into her place to take a shower?

Running a hand through long, blazing blue-dyed hair, she walked around the rest of the apartment, looking for any signs of forced entry, anything missing. Her “loft,” as the landlord insisted on calling it, had only one other room besides the bathroom, the “bedroom” separated from everything else with a folding screen she’d found at a garage sale. That made it a depressingly quick walk. The front door remained chained and locked, and nothing looked like it was gone. Not that she had much shit to steal besides an electric piano, and that’d be damn hard to move without waking her up.

“What the fuck.” She stomped a paw loud enough to rattle the floorboards, then gritted her teeth, waiting to see if Stanley, the cranky old possum in the apartment under hers, would bang something back against the ceiling like he did when she got too loud rehearsing. He didn’t, though. He’d probably had enough bottom-barrel whiskey to be dead until late morning. Maybe she should try that herself.

After another circuit around the flat, she threw herself back on the bed and slapped the light off again. This wasn’t the first time she’d had a version of that dream. It wasn’t even the first time she’d woken up to the sound of water. But it was the first time she’d found actual water draining. Somehow.

And it was the first time the dream hadn’t faded. She could remember every frantic, terrified twitch of the drowning coyote she’d been. She could almost remember the people throwing her in the river.

It took Serrano another hour to fall back asleep. If she had any more dreams, she was spared from remembering them.

• • •

“A grande latte with coffee instead of espresso, five pumps of caramel, five pumps of vanilla, and three pumps of hazelnut.” Serrano managed to keep a straight face as she read the order back.

“With almond milk,” the vixen corrected. “Don’t forget.”

“With almond milk.” The coyote made that change, and finished up the order. “That’s six dollars and fifteen cents.”

The woman scowled. “It shouldn’t be more than five.”

“It’s four sixty-five for the grande latte, seventy cents for the almond milk, and eighty cents for the syrup.”

“You’re not supposed to charge me for each pump!”

“I didn’t. Would you like me to work out how much that would be?”

Her scowl deepened. She paid with her phone, and made a show of entering “zero” for the tip.

“Thanks. Your order will be ready in five minutes, Karen.”

“My name’s not—”

“People are in line behind you, Karen.” She waved her hand. “Please move to the waiting area.”

The vixen’s scowl grew murderous, and she stomped off. The shift manager, a sad-faced hamster named Ned, gave her a warning look. She flashed the same shit-eating smile at him, too.

The next person in line was a regal-looking snow leopard, a professor at the weird, looming college that had opened at the edge of town two years back. Supposedly he taught magic, and supposedly he was normally a giant. She’d never seen him at anything over than the six and a half feet tall he stood now, which seemed more than tall enough. She also knew his blissfully normal customary drink. “Hi, professor. Tall latte, two shots of light roast espresso?”

“If you please, Miss Layotl.” He arched an eyebrow. “You look unusually tired. A late night?”

“I wish. Just haven’t been sleeping well.” She grinned wryly. “You don’t know any magic for nightmares, do you?”

“I know a great deal of magic for creating nightmares.” He paid in cash, as always, with a generous tip, as always. “Magic for banishing them can be more…complicated. However, a moderate amount of alcohol might be beneficial as a first, non-magical attempt.”

She smiled, although she couldn’t tell how serious he was. She never could, even the one time he assured her he’d been joking. He’d either be the best standup comedian she’d ever met or the absolute worst. “That might not be bad advice.”

“My advice never is.” He paused, looking intently into her eyes and narrowing his after a moment. “You’re not a student of magic yourself, are you? Or count any such students among your acquaintances?”

She shook her head, one ear skewing. “No, and no, sorry.”

He frowned, then nodded. “Do take care, Miss Layotl.” She thought he put unusual weight on the phrase. Maybe not, though; he could probably put unusual weight on asking where the creamer was. She just nodded back.

None of her other customers were particularly interesting, in either good or bad ways, until her shift ended five hours later. As she was clocking out, the hamster pulled her aside. “Serrano.” He cleared his throat. “You need to, uh, need not to antagonize the customers.”

“Who was I antagonizing?”

“Karen.” He winced. “I mean Susan. She was very clear her name was Susan.”

“I was perfectly polite to her, I just got her name wrong.”

He looked at her dolefully. “I’ll need to report this. And I’ve asked you not to dress so…punk.”

Serrano crossed her arms, accenting the studded leather bracelets she wore. “Don’t be such a fucking Karen, Ned.”

He sighed heavily, looking at the floor.

She clapped him on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”