Xenoro/Previews

Previews of upcoming fictions. These are incomplete and will either disappear once finished or disappear because they're terrible and will never be finished.

Chapter 11: The Tiger
Orion woke up in a colorless room. His mother, with her usual thick-framed glasses, poured her focus into a hardback book, the dust cover long-gone into the ether of the unknown. Orion glanced in the room, noticing that it was rather featureless and empty. He didn’t feel like a tiger anymore, although he was just walking around as one just a couple moments ago…

His mother looked at him, surprised he was here. She watched as he walked up to her, still glancing at this mixture of unfamiliarity and familiarity. His mother set the book down in her lap.

“Where am I?” he asked.

She glanced at the clock, with the numbers replaced by foggy words, some of which he could make like “dead” and “asleep” but some of them were just too foggy to make out. She looked back at him. “Asleep.”

“Well, how do I wake up?” he asked. He anxiously looked around in the bare room, feeling trapped and uncomfortable. His mother grabbed him and set him down in her lap. “HELP!”

“Shush, shush.” she soothed. She opened the book and words floated out hazily. He looked to his mom, a curious set of questions he wanted to ask popping into his mind.

“Did you know a witch?” he asked simply.

His mom closed the book and thought back. “Yes...” she paused as she answered. “She was a lovely lady but… sometimes things end up in unexpected ways. I need to find her again, set things right…”

He paused, taking in the room once again. Did he know that before? Did he make that up? Or was it really his mother in this room right now? He glanced at the clock. Still asleep, but the clock hands were moving a little bit. He moved onto another question. “Do you know how to shapeshift?”

“Shapeshifting... “ she said, pausing. She nodded. “...well, you don’t need to be thinking of the animal you want to shapeshift into. You see, you need to embody the spirit of the animal you want to be… a owl is curious and nosy, a lion is proud and boastful, an anteater is willing to do jobs nobody else wants…”

Orion understood now. He had been trying to shapeshift into a tiger but didn’t feel like he was brave for finding his way out of places, feeling like he had only stumbled into the exit as opposed to doing what he had to do to get out. Within the bubble, he actually did understand the solution and didn’t feel like he had stumbled onto the exit.

The only issue was getting out of the room. The clock’s hands had moved ever so slightly to fuzzy words that seemed to have some clarity to them now. He needed to ask more questions.

Some odd question poked inside of his mind, worming weirdly inside. He didn’t understand it, but he needed to ask it. “What is here now?”

Eris woke up in her cave, a lot cleaner than she remembered it being. She glanced over to her left and right, noticing a lack of color. Her world was in black and white now. She worried that she was color blind before noticing the green sweater of Rebecca.

Rebecca.

She looked over to Rebecca, wondering why she crawled back here. She was married, she had a kid now… well she wasn’t entirely sure if they were talking about the same Rebecca, but it seemed like that. Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca… she hated that she was still in love with her. She walked over to her.

“Rebecca, what are you doing here?” she asked.

This Story Isn't About The Beach
Sand, the ever so small particles that get everywhere and cluster up on feet, hands, clothes, wherever it’s allowed. It blisters like nothing else in nature; seemingly harmless and coarse, but sticky and unforgiving. Sand can travel to places water could never dream of being, staying there until shaken away by time, it’s father.

Sand was most of the reason Pete did not want to visit the beach with the rest of the group. He said, if they wanted to go swimming, they could just go to the pool. It was sensical, at least for Pete. But they insisted on going out on a five hour drive down to the beach and Pete had no real sway out of it. After all, what was he doing this weekend? His mom insisted he go.

So here he was, on hour four of five of a trip that was evidently wasn’t going to be worth the drive. Robert and Katie were talking shit about some kid in school while Ray just drove in silence. Pete knew Ray wasn’t exactly enthralled with driving over here, but he had no idea why he pressed forward with it.

Pete glanced out of the passenger seat. He wasn’t sure what to do about the beach, he hadn’t brought a book or anything really to do to keep him busy. He wasn’t planning to get sand in his shoes, but he knew it was gonna get in there the second they reached that beach.

It was a sunny day and the air felt dry. On the roofless jeep, it was probably the worst feeling to have for Pete. He watched a the billboard signs advertising crap like Silverburg Peanuts and David and Jessica: World’s Greatest Musicians. His eyes went heavy. He was tired of this trip, and he could tell Ray was too.

The beach approached them, not the other way around. Ray opened the driver’s door up and slammed behind him. Pete fiddled with the door a bit as Robert and Katie stepped out, smiling. “Thank you for driving!” she hollered to Ray. He paused for a second and continued towards the beach.

Robert and Katie were the half that were actually ready for the beach, Ray and Pete had opted for clothes that weren’t gonna make them uncomfortable for five hours. Robert had pineapple yellow swim trunks, she had a cherry red bikini. Pete headed to the portable toilet to change out of his clothes.

“Goddamn it, why did I agree to this?” he asked himself as he changed in the tight space. It was awful, the plastic had soaked up the sunlight like nothing else and the walls were hot to the touch. Pete supposed one could possibly use it as a makeshift tanning booth. He exited out, only to find that the sweltering air wasn’t actually that much better outside.

Why had Pete agreed to this? It wasn’t even a good day to go to the beach. Apparently they had completely ignored upcoming weather conditions, because there were a couple of grey clouds in the sky. If they were planning to stay here for long, they were gonna have to do it in the wet sand which was actually worse than dry sand by a big margin.

He found Ray in one of the Boardwalk buildings, glancing at a fortune teller. “It costs a quarter.” he said, shrugging as he inserted a quarter inside. The little puppet inside moved inside, it’s arms going over the plastic ball inside. It’s mouth moved, but it didn’t say anything. A piece of paper jutted out of the machine uneasily through a stone man’s mouth.

“What’s it say?” asked Pete. Ray glanced at the card uneasily, his lips moving to the left side of his face.

“The Krystal Gazer has foreseen the future! You will find love and your patience will finally pay off,” Ray read off the card. He laughed a little and put it inside the string bag and slung it on his shoulder. “Yeah… whatever.”

“Well, I suppose we should be getting to the beach…” Pete said, glancing in the direction of the beach. “It’s not like I really have money to spend on the boardwalk anyway.” Ray nodded and followed Pete.