# Pink Fuzz Chapter 2

Pink Fuzz
​
Fairy Boy
​
Reed’s lanky limbs thumped harshly against the innards of a cramped, creaking, wooden raft. The stink of mold forced him to clamp his snout shut and squint, as if he could filter the germs. Anxiety flowed through him like millions of needles pressed through his back and around his skull.
A familiar buzzing reminded him of how much he hated this place. This constant noise hummed harshly enough to ring through his teeth, and he noticed a concrete tunnel close in around him, with a sprawl of power lines running like vines throughout. Some of them were bundled at over a square foot in diameter.
The wires dripped with mold and a strange, syrupy substance. Their rubber insulators stripped away into the sludge, exposing splintered, frayed copper that shot arcs of electricity like spitting cobras. The water his raft once sailed on grew thicker, and the horrid reek nearly choked him out.
Just then, he saw someone, another pink raptor much larger than him. He adorned a snout-shaped welder’s mask and haphazardly touched live cables. He giggled as contacts were made and the wires screeched in protest. Then, he’d test two more cables before crunching numbers with a sheet and calculator.
Reed’s eyes shot wide open. He lurched forward and waved for the saur’s attention, nearly capsizing himself into the rotten, nacho cheese-like muck.
“Dad! Just take the day off!” Reed screamed.
But he didn’t hear him.
“Dad!” Reed called between retching, the miasma taking a toll on his lungs.
A wave of sludge crested and slapped his boat back. The sudden flood shot him upward. He huddled in his tiny raft; small, quiet, and helpless. The vessel crashed into the ceiling of the underground workway, scraping the rims off his only means of safety. The pink stoner dared to peak over the gnarled jaws of wood:
The wave crested like a foaming pair of claws, and engulfed his father completely. The sheer impact displaced the torrent just behind it enough to slam the raft into the ceiling with full force. The vessel and raptor inside scraped into a pink dust against the jagged concrete.
All went dark.
The pink dust flowed uneasily, each of its bits drifting further apart, wandering around tiny paths, leading to nowhere.
A blast of hot sun overwhelmed the pink dust, and a breezy sky of pure blue smothered the black away.
A massive pirate ship drifted toward the dust. The sheer tactile force of sea salt and wind and heat flocculated each chunk until it formed a large ball of clay. The clay then sculpted itself back into Reed, who waved toward the massive vessel.
He cried for joy when it noticed him, and from the bow of this mighty vessel, two figures cheered:
“Pirate Princess Lucy and First Mate Trish Trisaber have arrived!”
​
Reed gasped and jilted upright in Anon’s bathtub, armed with only a damp sleeping bag. Cold sweat poured over him. He forced his cramped muscles to move. As the sleeping bag tumbled off of him, the strong smell of fear-musk leaked out.
“N-no way,” Reed whimpered. He hurriedly trapped the overwhelming scent by balling the bag as tightly as possible.
After a hasty change of clothes, he fled Anon’s abode as soon as possible, and guiltily tip-toed down the stained carpets, egg-yellow walls, and uncomfortably bright florescent lights of Anon’s apartment complex until he found a washing machine to stuff his shame in.
It’s bad enough he musked at this age…
A pink raptor with his slovenly, laid back, upper class attire was enough of a target in skin row. However, he had plenty of clients here. Even if they couldn’t handle the carfe, they flocked to his null-weed, substitute amphets, business psychedelics, the works…
“Woah! Is that you, Ranky?” a gruff, human voice made Reed swing around on his heels, but the dino didn’t lose his composure. In fact, he was loosey-goosey; taking on his usual slouch with an arm slung behind his head.
Reed recognized the man.
“Oh hey! Howsit goin, bro? And… it’s Reed.” he replied.
“This is my home. Welcome to paradise, buddy. What the hell are you doing in a place like this? You smell fucking raw.”
Even over his overheating-and-nightmare induced reek, he caught whiffs of skinnies sneaking around the corners of hallways. They were always good at that, even as the savages in movies.
With a calculated response, Reed locked both arms behind his head in faux-relaxation, forcing anyone around him to embrace the floodgates of his now open armpits.
“What, you wanna smell?” Reed issued that as a challenge. “This is the scent of a fine, hard-working courier of medical properties.”
The man stomped toward him, but Reed kept his half-lidded expression locked on.
“Yeah? Well your medicine put Ronnie in the hospital last week. What am I supposed to tell the guys after that? You fucked me over, ‘buddy’.”
Reed heard footsteps closing in from all around this skin nest: a labyrinth of equidistant, narrow hallways.
“We can figure this out together. I never do a bro wrong, so it’s not me.” Reed smiled his usual sunny smile.
The human’s face, tan and gaunt, wrinkled into an even deeper frown, but his eyes avoided Reed’s aquamarine lenses of truth (and Reed caught that). “Well, we think it was you…”
“You can’t pull a raptor out of your hat. You bought from another guy, or is there another peachy raptor with guns like these?” he aims two finger guns to the motionless man, then fires:
“Pew.”
The footsteps pounded down the paper-thin floorway. An inevitable scuffle drew closer.
Before he could shoulder the chunker aside and sprint for his life, something hard slammed into his chest, sweeping him off his feet instantly.
The harsh lights lining the ceiling burned spirals into his vision, and before he hit the ground he heard giggling children, human children probably. The complex was so foreign to him he couldn’t tell where their voices came from, but he heard them laugh and play:
“Yarrgh!”
“A-hoy, yee matey!”
“This is the Royal Navy, release the orphanarium at once. We will give into your demands…”
​
The school bell rang through Volcano High. It was science class with Fang again. I needed someone to distract from all the strange apparati Reed left strewn across my room. If he didn’t try to synthesize my household cleaners into ‘pep boosters’ in my freezer, I’d think he was a narc with all the thrift store clothes he had stuffed in his bags.
He wasn’t even at my place this morning. He just left this schizoid note: a paragraph of scrawl all crossed out, with only a, “Thanks, man!” as legible handwriting.
The money sure helped, though, and I can’t complain when the guy made a mean shepherd's pie.
I didn’t even know peas could taste so sweet, and I was the omnivore of our pair.
“Hey dweeb. Stop mumbling about pie. People are staring.” Fang’s voice, stern and sharp, booted me back into the waking world. The sharp of her elbow dug into my side.
“What kind of curriculum is Fernsworth running here? I swear we were doing electron pairs last week. Are we pushing into bio already?” I asked.
“I dunno. That’s why I have you.”
“Thanks…”
Pages two-fifteen to two-twenty four elaborated on the ‘fantastic’ world of mycology. It included a story about some egghead who worked on ergot infested rye. He accidentally synthesized LSD for the first time and spilled it all over himself, getting really high in the process.
I had a feeling Reed would like this.
Speaking of…
“Hey, Fang. I got to hang out with Reed yesterday?” I said.
“Really?” Fang replied. Her amber eyes shot through me like headlights, eager to distract themselves from the workbook. “Did he use you as a mule?”
“He invited me over. We played some weird game on a dated console.”
“Huh? What’s his place like?”
Keep it smooth, Anon.
“It’s… interesting. He has one of those stylish houses on the east end, the ones with fancy roof shingles.
“It’s because you’re a guy, I bet.”
What?
“What?”
“I’ve hung out with Reed almost as long as I knew Trish. We go way back. Whenever I asked about his place he always deflected, even in his fairy days.”
“Fairy days?”
A set of jet black fingernails planted themselves across Fang’s long, narrow snout, failing to conceal the flush against her white, glowing skin.
“Heheh~. Never mind. Those were old days. We were different people back then.”
If I let slip that I told Reed what Fang said, that ‘weed’ comment, she’d probably get pissed. At the same time, she did say I should always be truthful to her.
I decided to pry the middle ground of this quandary:
“How do you feel about Reed now?”
Fang’s eyes narrowed to me for a moment. The thick red of her eyeliner accentuated like the brow of a demon.
Did I say something suspicious?
After some thought, she replied, “I envy the guy.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You’re so engrossed in your music. I didn’t think you could envy a dude… like…-”
“Reed gets around. He knows a lotta back alleys for a guy who drives everywhere. Like, I knew he ran ‘sales’, but I still have to lay a smackdown or duck out of family crap when burnouts keep asking me for his new burner number.
“I wish he spoke up a bit more, but aside from running around maybe he doesn’t have much going on up there,” she says, and points to her noggin. “He could be trying to lick every window in town, for all I know.”
“He has to have something going on if he’s this multi-talented genius. I’ve always seen him handle VVURM DRAMA’s wiring.”
Fang smirked. Her eyes narrowed into slits, which somehow only intensified the beams of her amber eyes. She mastered the countenance of a Cheshire cat.
“Did you guys fuck?” she asked pointedly, just as the bell rang.
​
Bing-Bong! Ding-Dong!
And now it was math with Carl-somethingski.
“Parasite,” was Trish’s greeting to me. Given how hard and fast her thumbs tacked away across her smartphone and the hard bite on her lower lip, she was obviously arguing on hornblr. Only that place could host such a neurotic brew of ethical naval gazing intermixed with twee porn.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an experiment on the limits of dopamine burnout.
It took me a moment to realize Reed was even there. Until he greeted me, I only registered the desk next to Trish as a pile of stale clothes wrapped in a tan longcoat and a sun hat. That didn’t even account for the rose-colored shield sunglasses taking up half his face.
Exhausted after being the emotional sponge of two-thirds of their band, I told myself to take a break, and didn’t even ask.
As usual, this was essentially a free period. Reed jotted down each row and column of Arabian moonrune algebra, and made a copy for myself. We found ourselves chatting about science (I think he still remembered the rail cannon bit). We speculated so many potential weapons made of PVC and stump remover that Trish could barely moderate her anger between us and her phone.
I didn’t even care if other students heard us. Reed was so laid back they probably couldn’t register what we were saying.
I had to admit, the guy was a secret badass.
I went on to mention the LSD related lesson in science class, but Reed’s face softened at the mention of it.
“About that,” he interrupted. “How is Fang doing… after the preening thing?” he whispered.
“She what!?” Trish roared. The phone fumbled in her mitts like a bar of soap before she pocketed it.
GORE ALERT!
​
“Why did the skinnie learn about this before me?” the tiny tyrant growled as we looked to the pink slips guaranteeing our detention. Screaming tended to interrupt class, especially when the school losers got dramatic.
To the fault of our nation’s school system, sharing a bench outside the office only made it easier for Trish to strike without the chiding eyes of the student body. Spears wasn’t in, either, so the only man capable of holding the purple plaintiff back was Reed, whose biceps bulged even beneath his sleeves as he struggled to restrain her her fierce, club-like arms.
“E-easy, Trish,” Reed strained.
“Just let me nail him. Just once!”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Whyyy? You let me pound everyone else who deserved it. I’ve jammed raptors into lockers twice your size, if strength’s the issue.”
“It’s… not.” Reed replied. His arms almost gave way to the trig’s willpower.
He winced a lot more than I’d expect. I almost wanted to bail him out.
“All he’s done is snoop on us. No one gave a shit about our gang until now. Why does he get to help Fang?”
Reed had to lean with all his might to keep Trish back.
Was she that strong?
Then Reed said something, as coolly as usual, “First-mate Trish Trisaber: Legend of the Seven Seas.”
“Don’t. Not in front of him.” the triceratops demanded, but the phrase shocked her out the rage trance.
“I used to wear a collared button-up. Can’t even imagine that stuff now, eh, Anon?”
I nodded, but had no idea what he was talking about.
“Fang used to be the captain, our Princess Pirate. She kept the namesake, but she was too wild to stay at… what was her castle called?” the pink dino asked slickly, and Trish practically melted along his words.
Avoiding my gaze with a face like a stoplight, she mumbled, “Sh-shamrock Spire. It was a spire, you dunce.”
“And I was…” Reed choked on his tongue for a moment, letting out a small cough.
Maybe that was a carfe thing. I don’t know.
“I became Frazt, a fairy. I sensed your passions from across the ocean and nearly drowned to find you, but you both saved me.
“I didn’t know how to talk to kids until I met you. You guys took me under your wings. You’d get into fights with kids and sneak into the P.E. shed to build forts. You were so cool. You didn’t let anyone stop you.
“People laughed at us for playing pretend for so long, and maybe we did… but we three, we shared something I’ll never forget.”
Like a spell, Trish and Reed’s eyes welled. Their gazes locked together.
“I can’t resist what you and Fang do. There’s a vibe of creativity you both ooze out. I don’t know what it is,” Reed laughed uneasily, “but I always looked forward to us playing again.”
“Why are you saying all this, just to rile me up?” Trish sniffled.
“No. We gotta keep playing, and if there’s no new characters than we can’t play anymore. You can’t strap on a sword without a rope to cut or a brigand to duel.
“Anon is a new player. He’s bringing something new. He helped Fang while you were busy schem- planning and I was-”
“-Getting skunked.” Trish finished.
Reed recoiled from the sting. “Yeah… Y’know. Anon helped me a lot too. He grilled my ass good.”
“Oh?” Trish’s saccharine countenance hardened like quick cement.
Reed’s shades slid down the length of his snout even further, revealing a pair of confused eyes along with an uneasy smile. “Weh?”
“Fine. We can talk things out more… I thought Fang was joking, but I’ve never seen you get so sappy over a dude.”
“We’re not fucking!” Reed and I shouted in unison, but it only fed Trish’s enormous ego.