Side-Write: Unspeakable Secret (Patreon)

Another small story from the world of Project Wild One. I've made a few references to these characters as an element in the world, and I thought it was about time to actually follow one for a minute. I had been considering going somewhere else with this, but just setting up the idea ended up taking up a decent amount of space, so it's possible we'll be seeing more of Sunny later.

As always, these stories aren't to be considered canon so much as explorations of the world and what may be. I hope you enjoy!

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Sunny had a secret. If his friends knew, they'd never look at him the same again. If his family knew, they'd disown him. Others talked about people like him with disgust openly, and they blamed him and those like him for all their problems. He might even be fired if his boss found out.

Sometimes it was hard for him to even believe it himself. But when he was at work, when the hours ground away at him and turned him numb... it was all that kept him going. The weekend was coming. Just a few more days, and he'd be...

It's not like he'd sought it out. Not really. He'd been getting drunk one night, feeling especially alone after his friend had ditched him. This cute skunk girl walking by said something like, "he looks like he needs a good trip, too." He looked up, and she laughed and asked if he wanted to come. It was her and two others, and they were all tipsy and heading for the door. He didn't really think about it, he just... got up, and they led the way.

It wasn't just the next block over, though-- they kept walking and walking, toward the edge of the city... but instead of getting sparser, the road got busier as they went. More people were joining them, ahead and behind, heading out of the city. They all seemed... excited. Some were just smiling, but a lot were talking, laughing, singing, swaying. There was a quivering energy many of them shared. As the last buildings fell behind them, some started to pull their clothes off. Sunny peered around at the others, and he found he was starting to shake a little too. What was going on? What was out here? What the hell was the plan?

He tried catching someone's attention to ask, but everyone was loud and growing increasingly energetic. He didn't even see the people he'd followed now, he'd lost track of them in the darkness. But all these people were going somewhere, and he was too confused, too curious, entirely transfixed by the absurdity of it all to just turn around and go back now. There was some kind of party going on out here, and he wanted to see for himself. They'd be entering Ranger territory soon, was it something with them? Did the Rangers party??

But he never saw a single Ranger. Everyone knows the Rangers keep an eye out around the full perimeter of the city, to keep the monsters out. Where were they? The others kept trying to get a song going now, but most of them were drunk and breathless from the long walk, and it kept falling apart and turning into some other song partway through. And then... they were entering the forest. Many of them were naked now, he noticed, and not even carrying their clothes. Where'd they left them? He felt almost like the odd man out, staying dressed. Should he...?

Something rustled in the forest, and he jumped-- as many others erupted in noisy excitement. Women screamed and tittered, men taunted the eyes in the night. Almost everyone was quivering, fur flaring, and not for the cold. And Sunny was finally starting to understand. They'd come out here to die.

Well, he later found that death tended to only come occasionally, but he'd recognized that that was the root of much of the excitement: the thrill of danger. Out here, they had no control, and they had no idea what would happen to them. Out here, there were monsters far stronger and more dangerous than any of them, waiting to snatch these foolish mortals up to satisfy their primal appetites.

One of them, a man barely more than a boy just ahead of Sunny, was taken first. A blur of motion surging out of the shadows as something swept across the path, and Sunny barely registered the boy's body bowing around a hurtling mass before he disappeared into the woods on the other side. More screams, and laughter. Men raised their fists and screamed into the night. Women caressed their own bodies, perhaps to smooth their prickling fur or to revel in the feeling of utter vulnerability.

Where were the Rangers? Sunny didn't understand. But he was losing track of the others-- the road was gone, and the laughter and screaming was growing more dispersed, more distant. He heard others moving nearby, but he suddenly realized he couldn't see anyone else... and he didn't know if those footsteps were his fellow city-goers, or... the creatures of this place, moving among them.

Maybe he should have turned around. Maybe he still could, but... he didn't know which was was the city, now. And even if he did... he'd seen how excited, how eager the others had been. He'd been infected with it. All his frustration, his aching hunger for... for something, for anything more than the life he had, it had woken up, they had dragged it out of him with the promise of something... amazing. And now, he... he couldn't turn away. Was it really worth it? What waited out here that made them smile like that?

He didn't hear it move. He only realized when next he looked up ahead that two tiny discs of yellowed moonlight regarded him steadily. Silently. That's what really sent a jolt through him. His heart was hammering, his breath was rasping in his throat, and his every twitch of so much as a toe seemed to rustle across the ground like thunder, but here were eyes a couple feet closer to the sky than his, placed without a sound. Focused entirely on him. He felt a fist of terror close around his heart, around his very soul, and his clothes suddenly seemed terribly constricting, his fur was bristling so hard. Maybe that's why he was pulling them off.

Those eyes moved closer, and he breathed a whimper that maybe was supposed to be a scream, a threat, a demand... something.

He never actually saw what it was. He only knew that it had clawed hands that handled his bodyweight effortlessly, a... very skilled tongue... and a dick much larger than he'd ever imagined he'd encounter in his life. What happened came in a rush that left him feeling powerless as a babe, forcing his voice from him in a wild, rising and falling aria as his limbs quivered and flailed uselessly.

And when he was left slack and panting in the grass, he understood. Sunny understood why the others came here. He'd had sex before, but he'd never had... that. He hadn't even thought it possible to be so... devastated, and so satisfied.

That wasn't even his only visitor that night, but he'd remember his first for the rest of his life.

Eventually, he learned that this was... something of a de facto arrangement, with the Rangers. It had been a pretty serious problem when people snuck off into the forest on all sides to get freaky with the things in the shadows... so they allowed the less dangerous monsters to come a little closer, just in this one spot, just on weekends. And they stopped trying to catch the freaks like Sunny and send them home, here. It was against the law, and a violation of their duties, but it kept the people safe. Well, safer.

And having failed to stash his clothes somewhere on the road first, he got to enjoy his first walk of shame back into the city mostly naked. Someone lent him a shirt just as he was getting into the city, thankfully, but it was still pretty mortifying, scuttling back to his home like that. Covered in juices.

Still, even after he'd washed up, he still felt... hands on him. He still felt... dirty, in a way that he couldn't ignore, couldn't resist. He carried out his chores and errands in a daze, staring at nothing, his breath shaky. And he knew before the weekend was out... that he'd be going back. He was one of those freaks, now, one of those damned fools, eroding the morality of the city, cavorting with the very same monsters his parents so hated, had worked so hard to protect him from. He'd grown up on stories of when the monsters came over the walls and destroyed everything, killed so many. And now...

Nobody could know. Nobody... except the others that took that long walk with him on Friday nights. It was a long time before he felt like he was really one of them... but early on he came to feel like this was the only time, the only place he could show his true self. He wasn't his job. He wasn't another brick in the road. He was a screaming voice in the night, a body twisting in the breeze, a piece of meat that hungered to be touched. He was an animal, and he only donned clothes as a disguise. That's what he'd learned, in the dark, that night.

He'd finally discovered his own secret.