The Fox On The Train

I know it solved a problem, but in many ways it was a cruel system.

At some point the prisons just became overloaded. The state simply couldn’t afford to feed that many convicts.

Genetic modification had been around for years already. It had started as a way to treat genetic diseases, but over the years it had morphed into elective procedures.

Ever wanted to change your hair colour? Eye colour? Height? Weight? How about that nose you inherited from your aunt Phyllis?

At the outset there was a lot of ethical debate. Everyone saw the benefits of genetic improvements, but if the cost of treatment was high, what did that do to our society? The wealthy were beautiful and healthy, and the poor continued to roll the dice in a genetic lottery.

I was very young at the time these questions were being asked. I don’t really have a strong opinion on the matter. My whole adult life I’ve only ever known genetic modification to be very commonplace.

When they started gene splicing humans with animals I think everyone was so conditioned they just saw it as a minor iteration of an already very accepted practice.

You can see how it happened. You know what doesn’t need to be fed, clothed and kept secure 24/7? A deer, or a badger, or a squirrel.

So it began. The courts would hand down a sentence, and the guilty would serve it as an animal. Low cost to the taxpayer, low harm to society.

The gene alterations wore off slowly over the duration of the sentence. If you were handed 10 years for manslaughter the first 5 you might be a wood mouse with no discernible human features. However, by year 6 you start slowly transitioning back.

It’s these people I feel the most pity for. Life is really tough as an anthropomorphic animal (anthros). They can usually walk upright, talk and wear clothes. Enough humanity to want a human life, but not enough to be accepted by society. Most shops, restaurants, hotels, pubs won’t take anthros. They typically have to rely on government support and services as they transition back.

We don’t have prisons anymore, so yes, it fixed a problem, but it was still a cruel system.

All of this thinking leads me to my current predicament. I am presently riding the night train from Edinburgh to Inverness and sitting directly across from me, is a fox.

I had never seen one in real life before. I was fascinated and found it very hard to not stare. I had to keep reminding myself, this is a person, would you just stare unblinking at a random person on the train? No. So try to show the same curtesy to this anthro.

It was really hard though, I mean, he was sat there in blue shorts with a yellow waistcoat on reading a newspaper. A fox! Wearing clothes and reading!

Eventually it became too much, I had to speak to him.

“Excuse me sir”

The fox looked up from his phone and his nose twitched. He looked over his shoulder and saw no one behind him. He then looked forward again and let out a little sigh.

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry, I expect you get asked this a lot, but can you tell me what it’s like?”

“How do you think kid? It’s frustrating. I can’t hold things properly yet, I haven’t got enough strength back to open most human doors, and I itch like crazy 100% of the time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, I can’t really imagine, but it does sound frustrating. For what it’s worth you look like you’ve transitioned a lot already, you must be near the end of your time?”

“That’s none of your business”

“No, of course it isn’t. I’m sorry. It’s just so bizarre for me to see a fox on a train like this.”

The fox looked back at his paper and muttered something. I couldn’t make it out.

I had been nursing a black coffee for the last 30 minutes of the journey. I had left my car at Inverness station and had a short drive I still needed to do that night. My phone had died as I left Edinburgh, which had made it even harder to distract myself from the fox.

It was past midnight now and the fox and I were the only two left on the train. We were only about 5 minutes out from Inverness now. I had done this trip a number of times. Inverness station was always empty at this time. Leaving the train in pitch black at an empty station was always a little unnerving.

There was a guard that came off the train and had to punch in a code at the gate to let you out. The gates themselves were very high with razor wire on top. Security at all public transit stations had increased a lot in recent years. I’m not sure if it actually made me feel any safer to be honest.

As I looked out the window into the dark night I just mumbled to myself…

“I hate arriving at night, I always feel like I’m going to get mugged”

The fox had his nose against the window too. “Or murdered” he said calmly, and without flinching.

A cold shiver ran over me, I felt very uncomfortable all of a sudden. I slouched back down in my chair, eyes fixed on the fox. He looked so cute in his waistcoat. I had forgotten that sitting opposite me, was a real life criminal.

We pulled into the station. I stood beside the fox, waiting for the door to open. My eyes darting down and left whilst trying to keep my face straight ahead. I mean, he’s not huge, what could he do to me? If he attacked me I could probably take him. That was the whole point right? They’re turned into harmless animals?

We walked out onto the platform and stood by the gate at the bottom of the razor wire fence. On the other side was a narrow waiting area where boarding passengers have their tickets checked. The guard needed to let us through one gate on the platform side and then another gate on the street side of the waiting area.

The guard walked onto the platform. He must be from Inverness, as the train pulled away once he was off. He was a large man, trousers stretched tight and high across a rounded waist.

“Evenin’ t’ ye both. I’ll get you on ye way now”

He reached out for the key pad lock to put the door code in. His fingers looked like they were missing all the buttons though. His hand was just flapping against the key pad. That’s when he groaned and fell.

He hit the ground hard, it looked like he might have injured his head on the way down. He must have had a heart attack or a brain aneurysm or something.

“Oh Jesus!” I jumped down on my knees and started trying to feel for a pulse. I was already jumpy, but now my hands were sweaty and shaking, I couldn’t figure out how to check a pulse.

The fox calmly looked around the station, then got down on all fours and smelled the guard’s mouth.

“He’s breathing. We need to find him help soon or he’ll die. My mother was a nurse with the NHS, I’ve had a lot of first aid training over the years. Call an ambulance.”

“I can’t, my phones dead. I’ll check his pockets, we can use his. Shit! He doesn’t have one on him. Do you have one?”

“I haven’t got thumbs moron, no I don’t”

Midnight, alone at the station, no phone, an incapacitated guard, with a convicted felon. I was getting very scared.

The fox climbed up onto a nearby bench and looked down the platform. After a moment he turned to me and said

“I’ll run down the South end of the station, you check the North. Let’s see if there’s another exit”

At this point I was both freezing, and terrified. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I don’t know you, you’re without doubt a convict, I just…I just…can’t, I’m frightened”

“You’re selfish is what you are. This man is going to die if we don’t find help soon, so whatever your hang up is about talking foxes, get over it”

“It’s not that you’re a fox, it’s that you’re a criminal. I don’t know your name, or what you did! I need to know what you did! Are you a murderer? Are you a rapist? What did you do?!” At this point I was almost shrieking hysterically.

“Would you shut up kid! Fine. Fine. You want to know? I’m Cedric, and I drove my brother Daniel home from the pub drunk, crashed the car and he died. OK. It was a horrible accident, I was irresponsible. I deserved the conviction, and this furry prison reminds me of his death, every, itchy, day!”

He was bearing his little razor sharp fox teeth now. His eyes watery. I had clearly upset him deeply.

I took a long breath. It was a sad story, but at least he wasn’t a psychotic murderer. I began to calm down.

“I’m sorry for your loss Cedric. I’ll head up to the North of the platform now. See you back here in a few minutes”

As I walked up the platform in near pitch black I thought to myself how hard the first few years of his sentence must have been. He might have been my age, just a young guy, thrown into a woodland as a fox and expected to survive. It must have been hard.

There was no opening on the Northern end of the platform, no way to get through. As I approached the guards body near the gate I could see Cedric a little further up peering over the edge of the platform, toward the tracks.

“What is it?” I asked?

“I’ve found a way through. There’s a small hole in the gate further down. I can fit through, and it looks like there’s a service tunnel that runs between the tracks and the ticket area. I can unlock it from the inside, then you can crawl through to the ticket area. The second gate doesn’t have a keypad, it’s just a latch that I think I can get open.”

It took me about 10 minutes to crawl through the service tunnel. It was dark, and damp. I managed to push out the service door into the ticket area. I walked across the ticket area to the second gate, it had a chain with a padlock around it. The guard must have had the key on him.

I turned back to the service door, it slammed shut, locked from the inside. I was trapped in the ticket area. I ran over to the fence facing the street, and saw Cedric, standing on the other side of the fence with a key in his mouth.

“Hey! You made it out, and you’ve got the key. Come over and let me out”

He dropped they key at his feet and sat on the curb, he didn’t respond, he didn’t move.

I could feel myself becoming drowsy. I needed to get out of the station.

A white van pulled up outside the station. Three men and one woman got out. They were dressed in black.

Cedric stood up and handed one of them the keys, “keep the engine on. He’ll be down soon, I spiced his coffee on the train”

My face pressed against the bars of the station fence, everything went black.

When I woke up I was tied to a hospital bed. It looked like I was in an old warehouse somewhere. I was so drowsy.

I looked over to my left, Cedric was on the bed next to me unconscious. We both had lots of tubes coming out of us. It looked like my tubes went into a large machine, and his tubes connected to the same machine.

The woman from the station walked in and started pressing buttons on the machine.

“Help! Please! What’s going on? What are you doing to me? What are you doing to Cedric?”

The woman scoffed then smiled. “Cedric? This is Mikey, Mikey Gambino. Head of the Gambino crime family”

“What? No? It’s Cedric, he’s in his 20s and he accidentally killed his brother in a car accident!”

“No. This is Mikey Gambino, he’s in his 60s, and he’s serving a life sentence for murder and drug trafficking”

“What? No that’s not possible. If he was serving a life sentence then he’d be a fox, a full blown fox, no human qualities. Convicts serving life sentences don’t transition back”

The woman smiled again. “Well, that’s where you come in. Mikey has no intention of serving a life sentence as a fox”

She pulled down on a lever on the machine. I could see my tubes fill with blood. I began to feel faint. The blood left the machine and began moving into the fox.

As my eyes began to close, I could just make out the fox. His nose retracting, ears shrinking, and a pile of red fur on the floor.