Episode 2

Episode 2

JOURNEY

Written by Andy Mascola

John cautiously entered the warehouse, never taking his eyes off his host. The man looked to be in his late sixties, maybe even his seventies. He was thin and tall and was most likely considered handsome in his younger days. The old man wore a floppy fishing hat with homemade lures attached to it.

“Who’s we?” John asked.

“Pardon?” said the old timer.

“You said we’ve been waiting for you,” John said.

“Oh,” the old man laughed. “Let me help you with your pack,” the old man reached behind John to take his backpack off his shoulders. John stepped away.

“You’re not helping me with anything until I start to get some answers!” he said angrily.

The old man sighed. “Okay. Follow me.” John followed the old man down the dimly lit hall.

Hanging from the walls of the hall, John saw old, framed black and white photographs of what looked like attractions from circus freak shows. Families with hair covering their entire bodies including the faces of their children, making them all look like werewolves.  One photo showed a man standing on a beach in a bathing suit, his entire flesh covered in scales. Next to it John saw a photo of a beautiful woman in a long white dress, standing in a field, with octopus-like tentacles instead of hands.

“Where did these photos come from?” John asked.

“Huh? Oh, those,” the old timer laughed and kept walking toward a room at the end of the hall.

John followed the man into what looked like a dining room area with a red carpet and walls made of dark wood. The room was lit by metal sconces along the wall, each having a candle. In the middle of the room was a long rectangular dinner table with four chairs. In the middle of the table was a circle of twelve, tall, lit candles on a black metal tray.

At the head of the table furthest from John sat an old woman with long white hair, wearing a black robe with a hood. Sitting next to the old woman was the blonde beauty he had seen outside. She smiled and fluttered her thin fingers, waving at John. The old man with the fishing lure hat took a seat at the table opposite the blonde beauty.

John let his backpack fall from his shoulders, dropped it onto the floor and approached the table. He pulled out the chair nearest him, but before he could sit down the old woman spoke.

“Do not sit!” the old woman screeched in a high-pitched scratchy voice that stopped John where he stood.

A bald Asian man in a black tuxedo with white gloves entered the dining room from a doorway at the opposite end of the room. He carried a tray with three metal goblets that looked like something from the middle ages. As the man put a metal goblet in front of each of the three people at the table John noticed the ears of the man were pointed at the top. Holding the empty drink tray behind his back, the Asian man bowed to the old woman at the head of the table and walked silently out of the room through the same doorway he came.

John ran his hand through his beard and sighed. “Look, I don’t know where I am and I don’t know who you people are and I don’t know what you want with me, but I’m sick of the riddles and I want some goddamn answers and I want them now!”

“Silence!” screeched the old woman. A painful electric current surged through John’s body, dropping him to his knees.

The blonde beauty stood and walked quickly over to him, helping John back to his feet. “Don’t say anything else, John. I can help you get out of here, but you have to do as they say and you have to trust me,” she whispered. The woman stepped back from John.

“Disrobe!” the old woman shouted.

John looked at the blonde. She nodded. “Do as they say,” she whispered.

John tiredly untied his boots and kicked them off. He took off his parka and began to unbutton his shirt. He looked up at the old woman. She was staring at him as she sipped from her metal cup. The old timer sat with his hands on the arms of his chair. He stared at the ceiling and mumbled to himself. John removed his flannel shirt and tossed it on top of his boots and parka. He pulled his white t-shirt over his heavy frame and dropped it on the pile of clothes. He crossed his arms over his chest as if to say I’m done.

“All of it!” the old woman growled.

John looked again at the blonde still standing facing him. Again, she nodded. John unbuckled and unzipped his pants. As he began to slide them off of his hips he felt something unusual on his lower back.

John stopped and reached behind himself. Over his boxer shorts he felt a strange protrusion just above the crack of his ass. A chill ran over John’s body as if his bones had turned to glass. He looked at the blonde with wide, unblinking eyes. Again, she nodded for him to continue.

John put his thumbs into the waistbands of his trousers and boxers. He breathed in and closed his eyes. He pushed his pants and boxers down to his feet. As he did, he felt it spring to life behind him and coil shyly around his right leg. It was a tail.

John reached down and gripped the flesh covered, snake-like growth with his shaking hands. He relaxed and the tail went limp as he stretched it out in front of his body. The self-consciousness he would have normally felt of being completely naked in front of three total strangers was nowhere to be found as he now examined this most unusual part of himself that he’d never seen before.

Made of his own flesh and lightly covered in about as much hair as his arms and legs, John’s tail was roughly three feet long and about as wide around as his big toe. It began at his lower back and ended, much like the end of a sausage, at mid-calf.

John examined his tail. He could feel the warmth of his hands on it. He pulled on it gently and got a sense of the permanent attachment to his lower back. He let it go and found he was able to move it around in front and in back of him as easily as the tongue in his mouth. It was as if it had appeared on his person from nowhere, but functioned to his will as if he’d had it his entire life.