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 Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 7:56 am
Pacing around his duplex, day after day, since seeing Sayuri's change did only one thing - wear the carpet down in his room. It certainly did nothing for Oz's sanity. His already over-worked mind was continuously bombarded by questions during the day, and then assaulted by horrific nightmares when he slept.
Finally, he decided to brave this 'animal' world and get out of his duplex. Even if it was for just a short while, it would be better than rotting in his room, letting the horror of the Island's true nature warp his mind until there was nothing left.
Oz's body just sort of run on automatic, his legs just walking whilst he tried to calm is mind. They led him to the town centre building, where he had discovered the cafeteria. But he had left the other doors unexplored.
'Entertainment Room'
Oz just shrugged his big shoulders as he entered the room, his left hand tucked into his jean pocket. His right hand had tapped nervously at every body part along the way here.
Hmmm...at least they know how to furnish a room
He looked about the large room, inspecting its contents and taking a mental stock for future reference. A big TV. A DVD player. An Xbox, which wasn't to Oz's tastes but games were games at the end of the day. Loads of movies. And loads of books. And - hello, what was this. Magazines. Adult magazines too. A momentary perk for Oz's hot-blood.
He spent the good part of an hour just rolling around the entertainment room, undisturbed as he picked out games and movies alike and read their description, only to put them back in the wrong place. He played 'eeny-meeny-mo' with the adult magazines, thumbing through them with forced interest. For some bizarre reason, each naked female figure had a random animal part on them in Oz's mind. Something he found really quite worrying.
Eventually, he flopped onto the couch, staring across at the bookshelf and picking out the titles.
Aardvark. Brown Bear. Chimpanzee. Llama. Elephant.
He morbidly began to think what he had been consigned to.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:24 am
Seth had been a rather discontent person for the last few weeks. The pains from his transformation had since subsided, and he had time to get used to his new form, but it had not made things any easier for him to deal with. He had taken Tommy's suggestion to get used to his new look in the mirror a few times, but his looks was still a hard thing to deal with, even weeks after they had happened. He had cared little about his appearance in the past, but these days he found himself avoiding people, avoiding going outside because ot it. Although he had tried to push the changes out of his mind and try to convince himself he was still a normal guy, the more the one question ate at his concious thought.
"What the bloody hell am I turning into?"
As much as he tried to ignore it, he just couldn't deny the fact he had changed. Walking was still the same as it always had been, so he had no issues there. He now had a stump of a tail which he could easily tuck into his pants and ignore - no big deal. Picking up objects had proven a little difficult with his new claws, but not impossible. Some of his belly had vanished when he had changed - absolutely no objections there! If anything, the hardest change to get used to was his hearing - sounds had become much more magnified and he found himself waking up more often than usual. He also found himself... sleeping more in the day time.
Such was the case today. The sounds of others walking past his duplex had woken him up. He sat up and gritted his teeth in his annoyance, his ears pinning back instinctively with his emotion. He debated going back to bed, but decided against it. Once he had been woken up, he found it hard to get back to sleep. He sighed in frustration and got to his feet, pulling on some casual clothes, heading out of his duplex to go blow off some steam, heading for the village.
Approximately ten minutes later, he found himself in the area of the cafeteria area, and headed for the Entertainment Room. Ever since he had broken his laptop he had missed anything to do with electronics. He craved digital based entertainment and pondered whether anybody would care if he just walked off with one of the game consoles inside.
Seth casually pushed the door open and hummed to himself, expecting the room to be completely empty. He walked into the room, his ears immediately picking up the breathing noises of another - his attention immediately turning to a man, whom was lying on the couch in the room. He was huge, and looked like he could easily slug him into next week. Also, he was completely unchanged...
"Bugger..." He said under his breath.
"Oh er, hi there." He quickly said to the other occupant in the room, forcing a grin onto his face, a grin that would have looked quite unnatural for a regular human thanks to his widened jaw and longer face. He froze in his position, wondering if this man was new or not. In any case, his plans to steal a game console were definitely out of the question now.
"See anything you like in here?" He added quickly.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:33 am
Oz had heard the door open, and was trying to prepare himself for what had entered. For surely, everything on this Island was like Sayuri - part animal, part human. He sounded fairly human though. Maybe...maybe Sayuri was the only one this had happened to? Maybe there was hope afterall.
Oz lurched himself upto a sitting position, almost hoping to see a normal guy looking back at him. But eventhough Seth's changes were nowhere near as drastic as Sayuri's, it was obvious he was heading that way.
"Ah s**t!" he excalimed angrily, and then flopped back down, placing a hand over his face.
In retrospect, this was probably a very rude way to greet someone new.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:44 am
Seth sprang backwards on his feet at the loud noise Oz had made, moving back a few feet. He hadn't conciously meant to do it, but the nervous instinct awakening inside of him had just reacted in an instant, before the human in him could do so anyway. He stared at Oz attentively, his stance tense, ready to get out of the way at a moment's notice if needed. It took the man a whole five seconds to force himself to stop it and compose himself properly.
"I was never this jumpy before..." He muttered to himself. "Sorry there, mate." He shook his head and turned his attention to the other man once more.
"Are you OK there?" He asked, arms folded. "Oh wait, you're new here, aren't you?" A sigh escaped his lips. "Bugger it, I'm no good with explaining stuff. You poor b*****d. What have you been told so far?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:56 am
Oz sighed heavily, now beginning to rub his temples as a way of relieving stress...that didn't work at all.
"What gave it away?" he said sarcastically. "I know it all...I just didn't want to believe it."
He didn't want to be this grumpy, he didn't want to be this miserable. And no matter what he did, he couldn't change it. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he was screaming. He was shouting. He was violently bashing things until his hands bled. He just coouldn't get to grips with what was happening.
He pulled himself up once more, perching his head on the top of the couch as he looked at Seth.
"So, whats your story then? How did you end up on this hell hole?" he asked, sounding really quite melancholy.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:14 am
Seth wasn't overly happy with Oz's tone of voice, but he had to sympathise with the bloke. Afterall, they were both stuck in the same situation.
"I didn't want to believe it either, and at first I didn't. I thought I was going back home, I thought I was getting out of here. Feh, fat load of rubbish that turned out to be." He wandered across the room towards the DVD collection, noting that somebody had unalbumatised them and messed up their order since his last visit. A clawed hand began to browse the shelves and he turned his back to Oz as he looked through the massive collection. He snatched a few titles from the upper shelves and tucked them under one arm, intending to take them with him.
"How'd I end up getting stuck here?" He turned around to face Oz again. "That Doctor Duvert b*****d tricked me. I was offered a large sum of cash to deliver something that wasn't quite legal." He frowned, quickly adding "Er, but it wasn't drugs or anything. No, just stolen stuff from a museum."
"I came all the way from Melbourne to this place to drop it off and collect my reward." Seth grumbled. "But it was all just a bunch of lies. I was told that the stuff I had brought over wasn't authentic, and that I'd be going home again when it was confirmed to be genuine. But that was all just a plot. Now I'm stuck here and turning into one of the members of the zoo, as you can see." He glanced down at his clawed hands and grunted. "Though what I am turning into, your guess is as good as mine."
His ears pinned back and a slight hint of a growl rose up in his throat. "I'm not going to just accept it and live here though, bugger that off for a laugh. I'm currently, er..." He stopped in mid-sentence, not wanting to continue with that line of conversation just now. If this man seemed trustworthy enough, he'd let him in on his idea. But first, he wanted to know more about him.
"So how'd they sucker you here? Did they promise you something too good to be true or what?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:24 am
Oz chuckled slightly at Seth's story. Sounding really exciting, almost like something from a spy film. Although, considering what was happening, a horror film was more fitting. His eyes followed Seth's form walk over to the DVD's, the mess he'd made far from his mind. Oz was a messy person.
He rolled around the couch, following Seth and facing him square on. He didn't look too bad. The hands and feet were creepy, but the face just looked kind of long. He could name a handful of his mother's friends who looked the same.
Doctor Duvert...yeah, that guy...
After stewing for several days with Sayuri's revelations, Oz had managed to piece together that Duvert had some hand in it. But he didn't know it was all done by injections yet. Neither did he know about the chip in his neck.
"Y'know, that sounds a hell of a lot more exciting than how I ended up here," he half-smiled. "Recovering alcoholic. They promised a rehab clinic on a lush Island."
Seth's half-sentence hadn't gone un-noticed, but he wasn't about to pry just yet. Oz had no idea how mentally stable this fella was.
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:48 am
"Recovering alcoholic?" Seth asked with raised eyebrows. "Bloody hell, mate... this place is bad enough to turn me to the life of a raging alcoholic. It's got to be better than..." He trailed off, shrugging. "Well, everything here. Might as well dull reality with the booze if you can. Doesn't make it go away, but it can be ignored for a while."
"So, you got any ideas about what you're going to do with yourself yet?" He wondered. "Don't spend too long lying around feeling sorry for yourself. I did that for these last few weeks, and its pretty damn boring, let me assure you."
"I got some ideas in mind, myself..."
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:59 am
A cheeky grin came to his face as he recalled the 'kissing lessons' he had given Sayuri, but he doubted that was a productive way to spend his time. A fun way, but not a productive way. He shook it off. Honestly, he didn't know what he could do with himself. Besides the detox, which seemed pointless now, the only thing he wanted to do was lose some weight.
But if he was going to turn into a large, chunky animal, that would be pointless too. And his injury made playing sports a big no-no. If he ruptured his tendons whilst here, god only knows what they'd do to fix it!
He didn't really want to hear Seth's words about alcoholism, even if they did make sense. But to have satyed his hand since he found out, well, it was something he could be proud of.
"I've no idea what I can do here. If I'm not scared about being eaten by a man-beast, I'm going crazy thinking about what might happen to me...what I might turn into. Hell, I don't even know if its started yet," he replied, sounding a little panicked.
Seth's change in topic was interesting.
"Oh yeah? Besides being a theif, what else can you do?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 10:40 am
"Hey!" Seth yelped. "I'm not a thief! I'm not a common petty criminal." He frowned at how silly he was sounding. Oz was right - he was a thief. He had stolen quite a few things since he got to this island, and his means of getting onto it was the worst act of thievery he had ever commited. Or at least, had assisted in.
"I can do lots of other things besides stealing junk, though." He frowned. "I'm a Network Administrator, or at leasr I was before I got here. I used to implement or maintain networks for businesses. It's a skill which is about as useful on this island as tits on a bull."
"I wouldn't say you've started with your changes yet." He tried his best to sound assuring. "This is only my first change. I changed about... er, just under a month since I got here. I think you're safe, at least for now." Seth focussed his attention on Oz, curious. "What kind of animal are they going to try and change you into anyway? Do you know yet?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2006 5:16 pm
Seth sounded interesting...until he admitted to being a computer nerd. Oz's grasp of computers spanned about as far as switching them on and using them for music downloads, chatting, and porn. One could physically see the blank expression on Oz's face.
Then the topic changed for the worse, in Oz's mind.
"I haven't a clue and I don't think I want to know," he replied coldly. "I'm sorry, this all sounds like a load of bollocks, its really hard to actually believe it."
He was moaning to the wrong person. Seth knew it to be true and he was proof of it being true.
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Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 9:26 am
"Yeah," Seth nodded. "I thought the whole island story I was being fed was a load of bunk, too. But look at me now - bloody hell." He shook his head and scowled. "We need to get out of here before it gets worse. I for one don't want to be trapped here forever, and I seriously doubt you or many of the other people on this prisoner island want to be stuck here for the rest of our lives either."
He headed for the xBox console and reached over to unplug the back of it, taking out the power cord and the Audio/Visual output cord. Then, he pulled on the free cords, unplugging the power cord from its socket on the wall, the A/V output cord from the back of the television. He wound them up and picked up the console itelf, intending to take it all with him.
"If you really wanna know what you're turning into, you can always press the intercom button in your room." Seth began to explain. "Not that it will help much. Dr Duvert fed me a bunch of lies from the beginning, and I doubt he would stop any time soon. Still, it's worth it, I guess..."
He glanced down at the xBox console. "Ah, this isn't what it looks like. Sure, I'm taking this with me. But they'll put in a new one more than likely."
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Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 9:38 am
Oz was just about to question Seth and what he had planned for the Xbox, when something he'd said triggered an impulsive question.
"Dr Duvert? The weird guy in the Victorian costume?" he furrowed his brow, his mind only asking more questions. After a short silence, Oz's body tensed up again.
"How do they do it? How do they change...stuff...?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 9:50 am
Seth stopped in his tracks and frowned, going completely silent at Oz's question.
"Yeah, Dr Duvert is that creepy guy in the top hat and weird costume outfit thing, but..." His gaze seemed to drift off to nowhere as he thought hard over the question. "...I don't actually know how they make the changes and turn people into freaks for their zoo. Another question for the intercom people, I guess."
"They have to do something though, right? I know they do. Because early in the morning, the day I changed into er... when I started looking like this," He frowned. "My jaw ached like hell. So did my limbs. So if you start hurting for no reason, start panicking."
He muttered in a low voice. "Hopefully you can escape and get out of here before that happens, though..."
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Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:09 am
Trying to make connections was not Oz's strong point. And Seth's own lack of knowledge on the subject of the transformations made things a little harder. So, if Dr Duvert was involved, surely he's the one doing all this, plus his staff of course. But so far, he'd only seen the guy once and that was for a vaccination. Oz imagined this to be a physical process, where the doctors opened you up and changed things.
So...maybe he hadn't done it yet.
"Someone told me you can't get off this Island..." he began, recalling the odd comments Seth had already made about escaping. "Do you have a plan...?"
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