#moonhorse

Teeth?

By InfernoBot

I had just finished recording, and was carrying my dog in from the office, when my mom handed me an envelope. Once I had my sweet pupper nestled into a blanket, I joined her on the couch and slit open my mysterious delivery. Inside was no note, just a brochure to something called ‘Furnal Equinox’ and an accompanying plastic badge bearing the image of a anthropomorphic dog, (maybe it was a wolf), wearing a graduation cap and gown.

As my eyes scanned the glossy pages, my excitement grew; some lovely person had sent me a weekend pass to a furry convention! This was my big chance to make a video detailing my adventures through a mass gathering of one of the internet’s most maligned and misunderstood subcultures. Over the coming weeks, I studied the brochure, read up on the panelists online, noted every question about the furry fandom that popped into my head. My itinerary for the whole weekend was mapped out. 

Super chats and KoFi tips managed to cover the cost of a bottom-barrel airline ticket, and I got a great deal on an Air B&B from a charming indiginous woman named Semide, whose sisters had enrolled in college and left their rooms vacant. She was even kind enough to include meals as part of the deal. The weekend of the con finally rolled around; I threw my things in a bag and I was off to Toronto.

Eighteen hours and three layovers later, I was sitting at my host’s kitchen table with a warm towel draped over the back of my neck, sipping a cup of coffee. It turned out Semide was a naturopathic healer and knew some kickin’ remedies for aches, pains and jet lag. I don’t put much stock in essential oils, but damn if I didn’t wake up feeling fresh and ready to face the day the next morning. The convention was being held on the waterfront about nine blocks from Semide’s place, not too bad for a walk, and I reckoned I could make the trek each day. 

I left late in the morning, well after the con had opened. No sense waiting in line, I figured. It was three blocks from the Westin Harbor Castle, when I saw the first fursuit. 

There was no explaining the rush of exhilaration I felt. This was real. This was happening. I was gradually being surrounded by dozens of people decked out in bright, elaborate costumes. Some that couldn’t afford full suits wore just heads and gloves, giving a ghoulish Frankenstein’s monster appearance to their character. Or the wolf-man caught mid transformation after being bitten by a neon fox in a rainbow pride shirt. The less daring, or particularly destitute, settled for headbands with animal ears and strap-on tails. 

Waiting to cross the last street, I was elbow to elbow with a giant Sonic the Hedgehog and a seven-foot tall purple giraffe sporting a quadruple-XL adult diaper. Something told me before the weekend was over, that particular garment would get filled. Before I could contemplate the logistics further, the light changed and the extremely polite, if curiously dressed herd moved into the street and we sorted into a semblance of a line being steadily processed through the doors into the main convention hall. I was in.

The lead-up to the main event hadn’t prepared me for what lay inside. A teenage girl in a ‘volunteer’ shirt thrust an opaque plastic bag into my hands before Big The Cat shoved me aside and began professing his undying love for her beauty. I stumbled into the row of booths on the main floor, further progress blocked by an electric green armadillo strumming an acoustic guitar with a stuffed fish tucked in the strings. 

This was it, I weaved my way between con-goers and took it all in. Clip-on LED cat ears. A custom-fit fang booth. Stacks of comics focused on humanoid animals. Racks upon racks of faux-leather collars and leashes. The waifu pillows. I pulled my phone from my pocket and approached the nearest open booth.

Time for an interview, I thought.

Eight hours, two energy drinks and a box of granola bars later, I was dead on my feet. There was no way of knowing how many people I’d talked to as the day progressed. Or just how strange my conversations had become. I think I spoke at length with Cool Cat about the merits of various vape pens, despite the fact I don’t smoke. But it hadn’t all been nonsense. 

Before I had degenerated into a gibbering wreck, I had chanced to be standing beside a fountain near the food court and heard a familiar warbling voice behind me. To my great delight, when I turned around I found a young woman with jet black hair, a hawaiian shirt and a black & yellow long-Furby draped over her shoulders; I instantly recognized her as Teya from Strange Aeons. After she’d finished speaking to her friend, I politely tapped her on the arm and introduced myself. She turned out to be super cool, excited to meet another youtube creator, and talked to me for about ten minutes as her girlfriend went off to wait in line for the bathroom. 

While most of our conversation centered around videos and our special boy Greg, my eyes kept getting drawn back to Thursday Plurbonym Boyporridge. His black and yellow checkered belly, his luxurious black fur, those piercing green eyes; it was all so captivating. I couldn’t quit looking at the charm necklace below his little yellow beak spelling out his name; Thursday. Eventually, I complimented her on her videos and her handsome long-son one last time and we parted ways. It had been a pleasant break, but even here, the persistent strains of Insane Clown Posse that permeated the space were grating on my nerves. 

When the time had come for all the furry folk to close up shop and head home, I staggered out into the street with all the lingering con-goers. Despite the initial culture shock, most of the people I’d met had been great. I could stand here, elbow to elbow with ponies, foxskies, giant pomeranians and adorable cat girl maids on the steps of Westin Harbor Castle, and just enjoy the last moments of the sun setting over Toronto. That is until the moment was shattered by an obnoxious voice that sounded more like it belonged outside a Patriots game accompanied by the echo of shattering beer bottles. 

“Now that the party’s over, we can get down to the afterparty at my place; which of you bitches wants to come home with me?”

My head swiveled like a tank turret toward the source of the voice, my face bearing the expression which must have read did this motherfucker just?

A man-child wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt that had been stretched over his prodigious girth, a pair of denim jorts hanging past his knees and sweat-stained socks encased in mandles, slid his oily bulk up behind a group of teenage girls dressed as some kind of anime cat maids. He leaned his acne-studded face in close to them and said, “Since you’re dressed as maids, how about I take you home and make you change my cumm-y bedsheets after a night of passionate love-making.” 

The overly-polite locals may have been in shock, but I knew a neckbeard when I saw one and knew immediately what to do.

“How ‘bout you back the fuck off bro, they’re kids.”

Maybe he wasn’t expecting resistance, but he seemed genuinely taken aback by someone speaking up. Once he got a look at me, he re-adjusted his fedora and stared me down. I admit, I might not look terribly intimidating; bulky, but not muscular, with my hair dyed bright teal and swept to one side. At least I had on a Pink Floyd t-shirt, that felt a little like a layer of protection against his fed-aura. He drew in a snot-choked breath and continued,

“They’re dressed as the maids from Painappuru No Oshiri, they’re harem girls that’re totally thirsty for the main character. Each maid is eager to bend over and present their ripe ruby star-fruit to their master. They’re, like, practically advertising how much they want it in the ass.”

“Why don’t you leave them alone, fuckmuppet?” I retorted. “You look like you're forty and they’re a bunch of teen girls.”

He was not pleased with my argument. The group of cat-maidens had shaken off their surprise and closed ranks. But they weren’t ready when he lunged forward and grabbed at the petticoat of the red cat-maid on the outside, lifting her skirts up to expose the shorts underneath.

“It’s not even a chick, it’s a dude. Chill out.”

A glance at the cosplayer’s face revealed a mask of burning red embarrassment, fear and confusion. Their friends were moving to grab at the neckbeard’s hand, but I was quicker. I swatted his arm like I was chopping down the internet itself and pushed right up in his face. Practically nose-to-nose, I couldn’t avoid the stench of fermented funyuns rolling off his breath.

“Keep. Your. Fucking. Hands. Off of them.”

His chins quivered slightly. 

“Oh, you wanna start something, Rainbow Brite? I bet you like it in the ass, prancy-boy.”

“For a supposedly straight guy, you sure are obsessed with getting your dick in a guy’s butt.”

The flab of his cheeks reddened to match his acne.

“You’re gonna regret that. I’m a man with a very particular set of skills…”

I cut him off; I didn’t have the patience for a real-life copy pasta.

“Is one of your skills getting punched by me? Cause if you keep talking, you’re going to be teaching a master class.”

I could feel that neckbeardy-bravado wavering. Perhaps he could sense the crowd around us had turned against him, moving to shield the cat-maids and staring daggers into his lumpy flesh. With one last snotty huff, he turned and stormed away; the sound of his mandles slapping on the concrete echoed off the face of the convention center. 

A group of several of the more adulty-er people had ringed the victims and were doing their best to calm them down. I shuffled over and started to apologize for the beardo’s behavior, when the red cat-maid began thanking me profusely and asked for a hug. Apparently, this was not the first time their group had been approached at the convention. We stood around chatting for a while, and they promised to check Evangelion when they got home. Once the cat-maids were safely in their Lyft, I waved them goodbye and turned to make my journey home for the night.

I started back up the street I'd taken this morning, but as I approached the doorway to a grimey building, I became aware of a fully-suited Yogi Bear propositioning a man dressed like Linda-Carter-era Wonder Woman. I was pretty wiped out and didn’t have it in me to process an altercation like this if they noticed me and instead took an abrupt right turn down an alley, intending to zig-zag back to my Air B&B. 

I was nearly out the other side when my ears picked up the slapping of mandles on pavement rushing up behind me. A searing pain burst into existence in my lower back, like someone put a cigarette out on my spine. 

I went down, hard. 

The mylar swag bag I’d been swinging around all day splashed into a puddle off to one side. I was barely able to heave myself over onto my back to get a look at my attacker. It was him. The Neckbeard. He stood over me, grinning, his yellowed teeth visible in the night. The little black box in his hand flickered with a blue spark as he triggered the taser again.

“Heh heh. You like that, princess? I aimed a little high so I wouldn’t damage your sweet ass.”

“Fuck….you….” I gasped out through the pain. My muscles were cramping like someone had dug a burning fork into my lower back and twisted it up like a plate of spaghetti. 

“Heh. You’re the one taking it in the ass, rainbow bitch.” He stepped over me, squatting like a linebacker, bringing the taser close to my face. “Maybe I’ll push this in your eyeball and see if I can make it boil.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement between his legs. Something thin and dark darted up from the shadows, toward his exposed back. He let out a cry of surprise, and shot upright, swinging his arms wildly behind him, grabbing at something. He hopped wildly from foot-to-foot across the alley, the tail hanging from the back of his pants swaying wildly with the movement. I thought it was weird I hadn’t noticed the tail before, especially with how long it was, practically sweeping the ground. The fuzzy black appendage was moving...wrong. It kept curling up and twisting out of his hands as he grasped at it, almost as if it were...alive. 

“Oh Goddamnit!” He screamed. “What the fuck, dude?!” 

He dropped the taser and got a grip on the tail with both hands, tugging on it. A ripping sound echoed through the alley as the seat of his pants tore out. The thing was, the tail wasn’t attached to his pants, it was going in through his pants, nestled between his prodigious posterior cheeks like one of those fetish plugs. As he violently jerked it side-to-side, it was ripping at the fabric of his trousers, the same went for his less-than-tidey whiteys. 

“Get this fucking thing off of me!” He howled. 

He grunted as the tail slipped his fingers and wriggled another foot inside him. Tears were welling up in his eyes and he collapsed back against a green dumpster. Like a man who had gambled on a street taco truck and lost, he bit his knuckle and gripped his abdomen through his stained t-shirt. It might have been a trick of the light, but I swear I could see his belly distend and squirm; the words ‘Friendship Is Magic’ bulging as something rolled under them. 

His mandles dug into the alley grime as he feebly kicked his legs, and I could only watch in disgust as the rest of the fuzzy, black, thing slithered up inside him, forcibly dilating his leather cheerio. It was incredible. I could actually see its progress as it wormed its way through his body. He blubbered something about God and Jesus as his hand clawed frantically at his own belly, before his voice abruptly went silent. 

There was a long, drawn-out wheezing sound, like one of those novelty rubber chickens, as the bulk of the thing moved up his throat. I don’t know how his flesh distended and deformed without bursting, but it reached his mouth and his jaw opened wide. First one small black, fuzzy ear lined with black and yellow plaid popped up, then another, followed by the crown of this thing’s head, pushing his teeth outward like flower petals blooming. 

It rose before me, straight up from his mouth, its black and yellow belly slick, but not stained by his juices. His dislodged teeth clung to its matted fur like an obscene necklace. It swayed slightly in the moonlight, a pair of luminous green eyes fixed on mine, and its beak opened. With the rising inflection of someone asking a question, it uttered one word: 

Avatarium “War Pigs” From the EP “Moonhorse” (2013)

Taken from Black Sabbath “Paranoid” (1970)

A collection of Black Sabbath cover songs running the gamut from Easy Listening and Synth Pop to Death and Black Metal and everything in between. Some are bad. Real bad. Others are truly excellent. Have a listen and be the judge.

A new Black Sabbath cover track posted daily!

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