# Pink Fuzz Chapter 1

Pink Fuzz
​
I still felt the crust in the cracks of my palm where Fang bled. After Spears caught us on the roof, huddled in tears and streaks of clown makeup, I could only imagine the saccharine music and shitty backdrops from something like Saikano.
​
But this was real, and when Fang looked to me, messy and exposed - at her weakest, the sun played off the contours of her pale skin. The feeling I got was beyond anything horny. I wasn’t prepared for it.
​
If I were a shithead as usual, I would’ve laughed at girls like this: a confused mess of a mouthy, likely bipolar teen throwing a fit over some petty nothing. That, or an abstract garbling of baggage: memories without context.
​
But she rang true to me when she cried. She spoke so clearly.
​
I could imagine the crunch of cartilage as Naser bounced from the side of that bluff…
​
She needed help, and I managed to keep my face shut until something actually worked out, but I can’t do this alone.
​
--
​
It was only the next school day when I found my sights locked onto the back of Reed’s frazzled, pink head in class.
How could he be helpful, this spaced out raptor? I can’t even think of a way to dismiss him. He’d be a great scholar if not for his dudeisms. Then again, plenty of geniuses are social retards, or just retards in general…
​
The soft 'shlip' of paper slid under my elbow. The pink, taloned hand of said dino handed me another completed sheet of math work.
​
“Yo bro. You alright? You look frazzled,” he asked.
​
I glanced up and a shiver shot down my spine. His breath sprayed cheap vodka into my eyes and nose. The sting overwhelmed me. I wanted to call him an idiot for cheating so loudly, but then I noticed the teacher wasn’t in the room.
​
The cheat sheet even had a different style of handwriting from his.
​
“Chill,” he said firmly. “I’m a logistic bog-witch.”
​
“O-okay,” was all I could respond with. “Thanks.”
​
I can’t get a read on Reed…
​
--
​
Lunch passed uneventfully in the auditorium. Trish was still a bitch and Fang was still Fang, if not irritable and exhausted.
​
I‘d imagine she’s still recovering from yesterday. She’d probably been locked into bad habits for a long time. I remembered what I set out to do, and avoiding the gaze of the tiny tyrant I followed the ratcheting of a socket-wrench until I found Reed.
​
He was huddled in the corner, head down and ass up for mecca as he tinkered away on some pile of scrap. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
​
Should I nudge him? His eyes were focused pinpricks and his tongue worked its way out of his muzzle.
​
Don’t say ‘blep’…
​
I didn’t expect to notice… or fixate… on a pair of ripe peaches waxing from the waistline of his loose pants. He had a round butt for a guy, especially such a lean one. How does he get so fit? Does he play sports or is he more practical; delivering carfe by bicycle like that Josh Peck movie?
​
Everything, from this scene to my line of thinking, matched many monsterfuck scenarios often splooged about over a certain Columbian waterskiing board…
​
His tail stood straight up, like a foxtail swaying in the wind. A bulb of downy feathers slapped across my face as I stood transfixed. This forest of twee and all the collective germs he picked up clogged my fucking nose all at once.
​
I sneezed like a shotgun onto his ass…
​
“Dude!?” Reed shrieked before his head slammed the underside of a stack of band chairs (the roof to his ‘secret lab’) with a hard 'clunk'!
​
“You absolute dweebs!” Fang shouted between gasps and exploded into laughter with Trish.
​
MISSION FAILED! ABORT MISSION!
​
--
​
The results of all this actually came to some good: Reed, as if hitting a switch in his cloudy, stoner brain, seemed intent on hanging out with me after school. My fingers twitched at the prospect. They needed the familiar crust of my keyboard to slide across, and I don’t blame them for that.
​
No. I couldn’t back down now, this could be the only chance to talk to Reed about Fang, alone, with no trigging about.
​
--
​
Before I knew it, I was suffocating in Reed’s astrovan. Smoke constantly billowed from the AC. A device like a respirator fed into it, wheezing as it pumped out dancing purple clouds.
​
All I had to do was mention skin row and we decided to visit his place.
​
His usual relaxed smile faltered, however, and his mouth tightened into a hard, straight line as he pulled a full u-turn at thirty miles and hour and slid into a perfect parallel park between two corvettes.
​
“Holy shit. I’m getting a contact high!” I gasp and trip out of the side door Reed opened for me.
​
“I wish.” Reed said, stifling a chuckle.
​
The entire neighborhood was peach and white, pristine and without a single blemish on even the sidewalk. Reed’s house was a two-story, puebloan styled deal with stucco spackled walls and those blue, shiny roofing shingles you see thieves trip over in fantasy novels.
​
Reed helped me to my feet, looking up to an open window right above the garage.
​
“Alright, man. Just climb the RV and swooce right into my room,” he said.
​
“Your parents don’t like friends over?” I asked.
​
“Keep it respectful, on the downlow,“ Reed said, barely audible. His jaw clenched with what might be actual stress.
​
We climbed the back ladder of the massive RV diagonally parked across the driveway. I followed the peach raptor’s stealthy footsteps. Just below us, the mobile home vibrated. A strange, high pitched hum was heard.
​
Is that a compressor or something? Are they making meth in there?
​
As we scaled the roof, we kept our stances low and wide. I felt like a tiny cartoon mouse scurrying across a minefield of suburban utility traps. Each tile looked and felt like a plate of blue china as it rumbled beneath our feet.
​
Just outside the window to Reed’s room, we stood to brace ourselves against the wall. From there, I saw over their tall fence and into the side yard. Several strange power tools and compression hoses laid out in the open while a pair of small kids, a raptor and a trike, bounced on the trampoline with a pair of chipped decoration swords. They swung at each other’s blades, letting out harsh clangs as they embraced a level of wolfjoy I wouldn’t even condone.
​
--
​
Reed’s room was pretty cool, complete with hand-me-down beanbag chairs and a makeshift fridge full of icy mountain brews. A widescreen blared to life, and after some tinkering with translator cables he managed to run an old creamcube on it.
​
“Haha. Nice. Fuck chunky pixels,” he said.
​
He then booted up a game. The harsh font choices and squealing sound design immediately struck me as something familiar.
​
Upon pressing start on a little round toddler controller, the narrator screamed, “Killer’s Heaven!”
​
Then I remembered it; an ‘obscure gaming’ thread on an underwater basket weaving forum. Some nerd kept harping about godzilla superiority from how they made toys for children. I told him he sucked radiation lizard cock and it opened a floodgate for schizo-nats.
​
Ah, my first ban. Warms my heart.
​
“Smilin’ already, eh? Killer’s Heaven does that to you. It’s a real treat, man. You can’t show this game to just anyone.”
​
Is this my reward for sneezing on your ass?
​
The rounded tip of Reed’s peach snout burned hot red.
​
Did he hear me say that?
​
“D-dude. Just give it a shot.”
​
--
​
I gotta admit, I have no clue what the hell this game’s about, but it’s pretty engrossing. It also helps to have Reed rambling about it non-stop, to tip me on what to do.
​
“So you’re like you, but an old guy, and a human, and like five other dudes who find invisible terrorists and fuck their shit up.”
​
I flickered the ‘soul radar’ to spot several meat-creatures with jagged teeth. Then, an NPC voiced by Jimmy Neutron babbled something before getting grappled and exploding into gore.
​
“Suicide bombers?” I muttered.
​
“Yeah man. They’re the Heaven Smile. They’re like, not just a political thing, but a virus spread by this Vietnamese death god or some shit. It’s really clever once you get around the foreign symbolism… and stuff…” Reed interjected again, more ecstatic than I ever heard him before. His massive, pink palm tree of a tail slammed the ground with hefty thumps.
​
I spent the next twenty minutes collecting keys and solving baby puzzles between shooting gallery sections with the Heaven Smile. The design parts of this game were dated, but it’s certainly interesting.
​
--
What felt like hours passed. I decided to stop playing after a group of Mahjong players shot each other to death. Reed watched over my progress occasionally, but was preoccupied with scribbling on a notepad. He whispered numbers to himself until he noticed the shooting sounds ceased.
​
He then planted his clawed foot on my shoulder. How he fits talons that big into shoes, I have no idea. I didn’t want to know, either. I hope to Raptor Jesus that he was just too lazy to lean over and use his hand.
​
“Man, you pick up real quick. Thanks a lot, dude. This game means a lot to me.”
​
“Don’t use me as a footrest.” I replied.
​
Reed chuckled and obliged.
​
“What the fuck’s up with the butane!” A voice roared.
​
“Stop cussing in the house!” A woman replied.
​
“Shut it, gold trigger! This is my house, got it!?”
​
The walls pounded and the crying of young saurs rang out.
​
Are they sacrificing a goat to CPS out there?
​
Reed scoffed. His pink, smiley demeanor hardening. His lips pulled back to reveal razor sharp, interlocked teeth. He marched up to his door and tested about three different locks, making sure we were secure from his family’s politics.
​
“…Methy faggots…” he growled to himself, then looked to me with wide, panicked eyes. Embarrassment washed over him and he felt the need to say, “A-Anon. Sorry about… this. Just keep chill, alright. I got us shacked up right here.”
​
He was the only one ‘unchilled’.
​
I thought about reloading Killer’s Heaven just to avoid his pacing and the cacophony outside, but instead I asked him something, at least to distract us: “Why do you like Killer’s Heaven so much. I always thought you were a-”
​
DON’T SAY CASUAL.
​
“-Xrox bro.”
​
Reed’s tail swished. His aquamarine eyes widened toward mine. He was very, very sentimental toward this game.
​
“It’s like, such a huge game man. It covers so much stuff… but I always liked the idea of the Heaven Smile. It’s like, some people are terrorists in saurian scales, err… human skin-” Reed said, then shot me with finger guns.
I contemplated jumping out the window, but I chose this pain.
​
“-To the most part," he continued, "we think we’re doing the right thing, y’know, but who knows if you’ve been infected? You look normal until the demon bursts out, then all you can do is hurt people.
​
“It’s pretty goofy, I get it. They’re like 9/11 zombies, but I always imagine a completely normal dude going home to see his wife. Maybe they’re both hurting inside. Maybe he sheltered her until she’s like… too dependent to do anything, y’know?… Anyways, I imagine him smiling to her, but it’s a hollow smile. The smile spreads across his head until his skull flips open and BAM! HEAVEN SMILE!”
​
What the fuck?
​
My mouth slowly shapes itself into some vague vowel, but nothing comes to mind, nothing worth saying.
​
Then it hit me, I imagined him and Trish and Fang together. They were always together, so why did she need to consolidate in me?
​
I looked up to Reed, who smiled dreamily and stared out his window. It was the only source of natural light in the room, (not much different from mine except for his circuit boards and blinking technolights). The waning sun showered him in orange-red. It complemented his softer pink tone and recolored his body in its image, and as the sun crept over the horizon, burning away slowly, a shadow grew from the tips of his hair downward, as if he’d melt away.
​
“Reed. You reminded me of something. It’s about Fang,” I said, before the moment was lost.
​
Reed blinked, then looked down to me and scratched his head. “Yeah? Oh right! She was really messed up lately. Is she okay?” he replied.
​
“She cried her eyes out.”
​
“Bummer.”
​
“She was preening too.”
​
Reed sunk his head and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed.
​
“I…” he muttered.
​
“She told me about what happened with Naser. Look, I didn’t wanna pry at first. I didn’t give a shit back then, but you’re supposed to be her friend. Why am I the one who needed to do this?”
​
The wooden bed rest next to Reed cracked as his nails sunk into it, but Reed’s expression was still soft.
​
“What? I’m not good with this stuff, man. Leave that to Trish. She’s more… emotionally involved with identity… and all that stuff.”
​
“She’s too controlling. I don’t even know if she means well about it. She didn’t want Fang to play guitar for how long now? And you didn’t do anything about that either.”
​
“We wanted to commit to an idea, you know…”
​
“You can’t be a neutral party when there’s three people voting. You took Trish’s side every time, didn’t you?”
​
Reed’s ass slammed onto his bed with how hard that comment hit. He wrung his hand across his forearm like a frightened child.
My cheeks burned and my spit boiled as I gave him another verbal lashing, “She looked so happy on the guitar. Her mind races to life and her tail beats out little rhythms. How could you not notice that?”
​
Why did I say that?
​
Reed then leaned forward, taking the obvious chance to dismiss me entirely, “Look, man. Fang is a passionate lady. I know you got the hots for her, but we know her better. If she didn’t want to play bass that badly she could’ve left. It’d be bunk for her to lie by omission to friends like that.
​
“Isn’t that what you did at the concert?”
​
Fuck. Again, a network of phones have trapped me in their web of gossip.
I didn’t try to refute that.
​
“I’ve heard the way you mumble about me before. You can’t do stoichiometry, or even algebra, and you think I’m stupid…”
​
Reed’s voice rumbled with a low growl. The ‘guns’ draped off of his broad surfer’s shoulders trembled like iron in a forge. A hint of his dagger teeth gleamed from under his soft lips again.
​
As soon as it came, the tension bottled into this cramped room -- trapped within the thin walls of this turbulent shithole -- released. With a soft exhale, Reed composed himself, although he glared at me from under his brow.
​
“I’m sorry, bro,” he said. “I really don’t wanna get mean. I try not to let it get to me, and that’s why Fang likes me. My friends and I, we go through rough shit, but we have passions and we help each other with-.”
​
I didn’t want to say this, but I recalled what she said when we were gardening for detention, back when I spaghetti’d about being at the concert: “Fang said you were useless to her, like a weed. She said you were a stepping stone for her success.”
​
That hit Reed like a mallet to the noggin. I swear his hair blew back. His chill, laid back posture withered into a tired old man’s instantly. He crumpled onto his bed. He turned away from me. His tail retreated between his legs.
​
“That’s not true…” Reed said. His voice was so quiet, like a far cry from the mountains.
​
“I’ve been hanging out with you guys a lot recently. Usually, you talk to me. I haven’t seen you talk to Fang much at all, only Trish.”
​
Reed’s hands trembled around the massive bush at his tail tip. His fingers jostled the frilly downy feathers.
​
You better not start preening too. I’m not playing therapist for all you freaks.
​
I almost wish he heard that this time, because now Reed’s delightful family were complaining about lost poppies, very loudly. At least the kids stopped crying now.
​
“Am I really that pathetic to you? Did you come over just to tear me apart? You were the outsider she needed, better than any of us.
​
“Sometimes, being a friend really locks me up. I- I’m so afraid to talk to them because of their love… Like, I told a vato to fuck off after he couldn’t pay for carfe yesterday, but… I don’t want Fang or Trish… to hate me.”
​
“You wear a heaven’s smile, and you’re infecting them by being so complacent.”
​
That was the single gayest thing I ever said.
​
“I know. I always knew it, but I’m weak,” Reed said. He rolled over to face me this time. His eyes were like pools of ocean water, not the snot green crap but the stuff you only find on the coasts of war torn nations. His welling, blue eyes trembled with barely restrained tears that flowed down his sharp, angular cheekbones.
​
Fuck. If I end up going Rance on every student in this goddamn school Spears can’t blame me. Look at this. He’s lounging like a girl in some renaissance painting, tail between his legs and weeping openly to me. There was something beautiful about this moment, but maybe I was just seeking control. Maybe Trish gets really huffy over these sorts of breakthroughs.
​
I can see why she does it now.
​
“You aren’t controlling, bro. It’s cool.” He snorted wetly and blinked away his tears. “Sides’, you’re not getting any of my drug money until you kill a fed. That’s how you prove loyalty to me.”
​
Reed managed to peel himself upright. You never realize how much you miss the radiant grin on his mug until it’s gone, but it was back now, and this time it wasn’t spacey, but crisp. He was actually here.
​
Just then, several thumps of boots drew near the door. Shouts of compressed air blew holes through each of Reed’s locks, one-by-one.
​
I expanded my catalog of Reed emotions today, but that’s how it always is, isn’t it? It’s like a really nice ice cream man who gives you free treats, but he used to work for the mob.
​
You never really know someone until you see him growling and thrashing at his older brother.
​
“Fuck you, Rhine! I invented bolt breaking in this fucking house!” Reed shrieked before a large palm slammed his head into a dresser.
​
--
​
You may wonder: Anon, why are you sitting there while your friend fights against a doper freak with a switchblade?
​
It’s because they’re raptors. Look at that pink blur. It’s like two bobcats murdered an entire drag show and fought for the scraps.
​
Rhine was larger than Reed, but the latter was surprisingly good with reversals. It’s hard to see someone with his stature (namely the gangly legs) wrestle like that, but what do I know? I just fuck around on the internet.
​
“You gonna stab me this time, bro? Hah! Fucking pussy!” Reed growled confidently as he locked his thighs around the assailant’s head. Nothing but the hair of Rhine’s mop top stuck out from the growing mountains of leg muscle now straining the limits of his jeans.
​
“Drop it. Drop it, buddy, or I’ll bust you like a watermelon. You think our fake dad - or you - can mix the fine carfe? Your brew is dangerous, amigo. I can’t have you hurting our customers.”
​
As the stiletto blade thunked tip-first into the carpet, Reed thought aloud, “You’re right, Anon. It’s all about stepping up.
​
“Now I’ll pay you six-hundred bones to let me stay at your place, because we gotta jet, like right now.”