Photo Morph - Too Late (Fox TF)

Bradley was on a hike when he crossed paths with a strange man with a dark look in his eyes. The man was dressed in furs, his hair tangled with twigs and leaves, and his face seemed distorted...not fully human...Bradley swore it looked somewhat like an animal skull. The strange man chanted as Bradley turned around fled back the way he came in a cold sweat. That night his body constantly shivered and chills ran from his head to toes, even to a strange bump that had appeared at the end of his spine at his tail bone which involuntarily twitched in pain. When he woke up he discovered his tattoo of a fox was glowing unnaturally.

He called in sick and spent all day trying to research what was going on, especially the strange man he had encountered. He felt ill and needed answers. But all the while he could feel his bones shifting and rearranging under his skin, his fingers crunching inwards the skin puffing into pads, everywhere itching as tiny hairs broke through his pores, forming patches of reddish and white fur. At one point, a headache throbbed restlessly, and he stumbled to the bathroom, feeling the urge to vomit. Instead, his attention was caught by his appearance in the mirror. He watched in abject horror as his skull visibly compressed, while his nose and mouth cracked outwards, and he could taste his own saliva thick and pungent. His own body odor stung his nose, the room filled with the smell like a wet dog.

His search for information became more and more desperate once he could no longer fit in his clothes and his joints wouldn't bend in the proper way. He was forced to lay on the cold floor and wreath, as his shoulders and pelvis began to realign, his skin fighting to catch up with the way they bulged and angled under his flesh. From then on, he was forced to crawl around on his hands and feet by his own body, which had become a stranger to himself.. 

As the day progressed into night, his worry intensified. Objects in his room started to shift as if they were unfamiliar, and he'd never seen them before. At first he thought his entire apartment was changing, not realizing that he was losing words and meanings for the things within it. He didn't know what half the things in his room were. He experimentally sniffed at them, trying to figure out what they were, constantly distracted by a strange shape that initially frightened him. The marks on the computer screen started to blend together. He found himself yipping in agitation, not knowing how to formulate the thoughts in words, not just forgetting how to speak, but suddenly finding himself unable to string together the same thoughts needed to understand what was happening to him. As he clawed at the laptop, trying to imitate the motion he remembered, the room darkened. He howled as the changes accelerated, the presence of the stranger filling the room like a void. At that point, in the sea of strange urges and agony of shifting flesh, he had a thought come to him like a foreign voice in his vulpine mind. He was too late.

The next day the forest had found among itself one more adult fox wandering about like a newborn cub just discovering their existence. Every noise, every scent like lighting in their thoughts, as the fox was how to navigate their world in the ways they would have as a cub.

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Thanks to Bradley Blue Werefox who posed for the stock!