Goodbye, Roger
By Koopasi, feat. Roger the Clumsy Fox, for DrHojo123
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The fox nerd trundled along on his bicycle in the gathering twilight. He was a lanky type, he was 19 years old, but he barely passed for 13 because he was so scrawny. His hair was long with bangs that hung in his eyes, parted by his oddly overlarge ears. His clothes could only be described as “Shabby Dork Chic”, with a bargain bin shirt and ripped and patchy pants, both a few sizes too big. He wore glasses that were currently fogging up from his continual mouthbreathing, the effort of pedaling up the very, very slight incline taking a lot of exertion. He paused, wheezing and took out an inhaler, taking a dose before he pushed on, wiping his sweaty, greasy forehead.
This fox’s name was Roger, and he was very unlucky. This was demonstrated as his shoelaces, which had come untied somehow while he was standing using his inhaler, got tangled up in the chain of his bike, making the spokes lock up and him to go veering off the sidewalk and into a tree. He went right over the handlebars and landed in a bush. Fortunately, Roger had been prepared for the almost guaranteed accident, and had worn pads and a helmet. Unfortunately, he couldn’t have prepared for landing in a patch of very potent poison ivy.
He spent the rest of the drive home, meandering across the path, trying to scratch his burning, itchy skin at the same time he was steering. His fur was already red, but was now covering an angry rash that went everywhere. Finally, he reached his house when the sun had almost completely set. He tripped again, his laces tangled and somehow having knotted themselves together while getting off his bike in the garage. He fell on his face on the dirty concrete. With a sniffle, he pulled himself to his feet and slouched miserably inside. There was no use getting upset, he was used to bumps and bruises, and he didn’t expect sympathy from anyone; as pathetic as he was, people just seemed to find him annoying and forgettable.
His house was not large, and he lived with a distant and apathetic father and a much better loved and far superior younger brother named Nate. It was weird, getting Nate’s clothes when he outgrew them. Even at 11 years of age, Nate had grown taller than Roger, and now his “little” bro was 14, he loomed like a linebacker, which was suiting since he was captain of the football team at school. The ‘hand-me-ups’, as they were, always fitted poorly and were way too big.
No one noticed him when he walked in the house, still scratching, and stumbled up the stairs to the bathroom. He ran a bath in the dingy tub, removed all his oversized clothes, which was practically as easy as shrugging them off into a pile on the floor at his feet, and looked in the cabinets. He shivered at a glance in the mirror. His body was aggressively prepubescent, still! Even though he was 19 years old and in gap year before college! He was so scrawny and underdeveloped he already looked like a wetted down, skinny dog without even getting wet yet. If he got too wet, he thought wryly, maybe he’d just up and disappear, not like anyone would care.
If only he knew how portentous that thought really was.
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Standing on tiptoe on the folding stepstool that he always had to use to reach the sink, he tried to reach the bottles of soap, shampoo, and special ointments kept on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet. His clumsy fingers knocked a few heavy items down onto his head first: a pumice stone, a heavy-duty bulk size package of toilet paper, and a clothes iron, which was up there for some inexplicable reason. With stars dancing in front of his poor-visioned eyes he finally pulled down the pink bottle of scented ointment.
It was a very special bottle, bought just for him, for his various skin complaints and ailments. It had been quite expensive, and he’d been warned to be very, very careful with it, but saying that to Roger was like trying to teach a newborn fawn ballet. He could try his very best, put all of his effort and strength into it, but it was an inevitability that some misfortune or mishap was going to occur with him in its vicinity. And he’d take the brunt of it every single time.
Using both his little feeble hands to carry the bottle, he waddled over to the bath, which was overflowing by now. With perfect comedic timing, Roger slipped on the puddle of bathwater forming on the floor and the bottle flew out of his arms and splashed in the tub. As luck would have it, the bottle spilled almost all its contents into the water and it immediately began to froth. Sliding and spread-eagling all across the bathroom floor, Roger managed to reach the bath tap and turn it off. He was already damp from falling in the puddles on the floor, and his whole body ached from the rash still stinging on every inch of him.
The bath was foaming up into a cloud of orange-y pink bubbles, and the scent was heady and strong in the steamy air. He was going to be in trouble for making such a mess, Roger knew it, and for wasting all of the special stuff. The fox had no choice but to try to make use of as much of it as he could. He struggled into the tub, needing several tries to get his leg up and over the lip before splashing down, immediately swallowing a lot of sour, soapy water. He flailed around before finding the edge and pulling himself up, his tiny, clumsy feet straining to reach the bottom. He immediately collapsed, sloshing the water all over the place; his foot had found the dropped bottle on the floor of the tub, which slipped as he put his weight on it, resulting in a brutal, cartoonish pratfall. Standing up, dripping and with an afro of suds on his head, the tiny dork just barely peeked over the side on tiptoe. He coughed up the nasty-tasting suds in his throat and he had to wonder if he would ever be able to get the taste out of his mouth, which was like boot polish and spot remover concentrated and aged to a fine vintage.
If Roger had picked up the empty bottle from the bottom of the bath, and had his glasses on, and had the sense of foresight to squint at the fine print on the bottle before now, he’d see a warning saying to only use a measured amount and that unsightly “shrinkage” could occur from overuse. Honestly, if Roger had the foresight, he could have prevented a lot of things from happening to him. However, reality seemed to have made a vendetta against the fox, insuring that adversity and humiliation followed him around like a lovesick puppy or a persistent odor.
Roger was practically blind without his glasses, apart from that, he had his eyes shut tight, already burning from the soap that had gotten in them the second he’d gotten in. He was managing only by feeling around. The fox had to scrub every scrawny, stubbornly underdeveloped inch of his naked body to stop the burning of the poison ivy. Sinking into the bath, Roger had to admit that the bubbles and the orange ointment were soothing the itchy rash on his body. Everywhere the suds touched grew shiny and strangely numb for a moment, but Roger hardly noticed.
The scent was pretty overwhelming and soon had him stuffed up and sniffling. The burning on his body was turning into burning in his eyes and sinuses. Not even a relaxing bath could be nice for poor Roger, it seemed. The bubbly froth mountain was stubborn and it didn’t seem like it wanted to deflate or start to subside anytime soon.
With blindly seeking hands, which fumbled about in the bottom of the bath, he tried to find the drain plug. He wanted to rinse himself off, but the tub needed to be empty before he turned on the shower or it would just get more water everywhere. He didn’t want to think of the mess he’d already made and would have to clean up. Finally, Roger’s scrabbling paws found the chain of the plug and pulled. It took a few tugs, his feeble strength fighting the seal, but finally, it came free and he flopped back in the water, stubbing his nude bum on the hard tub basin and sloshing stuff everywhere.
The suction began, and Roger was prepared. When he was younger he had been frightened of being sucked down the drain and, as a straw-thin beanpole with the luck of a black cat spilling salt under a ladder in a funhouse mirror maze after a wrecking ball, it was a real possibility. He planted his feetpaws on either side of the drain as the water level started to lower. The little fox had to strain against the current, grabbing hold of his tail to prevent it from being sucked down into the whirlpool forming.
When the water was all gone, Roger stood up, and almost fell back down again, tripping on the same empty bottle in the bottom of the bath. The fox grabbed onto the lip of the tub, his legs scrabbling and flailing in a frantic sort of two-step tapdance. Finally, he managed to stand up. Roger felt around and turned on the showerhead to rinse off, twisting the tap. The water that came out was ice cold at first, of course and he squealed girlishly as it poured over him.
By the time he’d managed to rinse himself off, climb out of the bath, falling down at least 3 more times, then dry off, and clean up the bathroom, it was well and truly dark outside. Exhausted by the whole day’s misfortunes, Roger went straight to his bedroom and flopped onto his tiny, twin-sized mattress.
The fox had a hard and restless night of sleep, tossing and turning, falling out of his bed more than once. His dreams were unpleasant and strange, he kept on winding up in a big crowd of people, but no one would notice him or seemed to realize he was even there. This was normal of course, he barely stuck out of a crowd of even middle schoolers, but something about the way he wasn’t looked at even once by the people in his dream was unnerving him. Looking at himself, he was pale as a ghost too, practically see-through. People started to walk right through him and that’s when he woke up.
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The sun was up when he opened his eyes. It was Saturday, and he was still groggy and achy and tired, but he didn’t think he was going to be able to get any more sleep. He sat up with a groan and swung his legs over the side of his bed. He didn’t register it, but the floor seemed oddly farther away. His feet didn’t touch the ground normally, but now they almost seemed a few inches higher than before. He hopped down and the underwear he had slept in as pajamas started to slide off his waist. Prepared for this too, he pulled it up; weird, it was normally baggy, but not this much. He dismissed that for the time too and padded over towards the door, stepping on some sharp bits of bric-a-brac on the floor and stubbing his toe on the door along the way, as was his usual routine.
He went back into the bathroom and stepped up on the stool to look in the mirror. It was higher too; he needed to rise onto tiptoe on the top step of the fold out stepstool to even see his eartips in the mirror. This was troubling; something definitely strange was going on. Roger tried to comb his hair blind and not think about it, even as he had to keep shifting his grip on his drooping undergarments. He felt his face, it was strange, usually he woke up with oily skin, but today his fur was smooth as can be; well, at least one thing was going his way.
Roger did his best with his clothes back in his room, they just wouldn’t stay on though, like his body was not only seemingly smaller, it also felt slippery smooth, like it was strangely silky and unsubstantial. Finally he settled on a pair of extra small primary-colored kiddie briefs he’d had for years and an old shirt that covered him to his knees. On the bright side it was the weekend so he probably wouldn’t have to face too much of the public. He was always unnoticeable up until the point he did something embarrassing, like trip and lose his pants, at which point every single eye seemed to be magnetically drawn to him. Endeavoring to keep his shoulder from popping through the neckline, Roger opened his bedroom door by straining on tiptoe and waddled towards the stairs. He descended, grasping the railing to reduce the probability of taking a tumble and managing to make it to the bottom step without falling on his rear.
Things did not improve at breakfast for Roger, though they rarely improved ever. Today he was extra invisible it seemed. His dad and his big little brother didn’t even notice him when he walked in, like he was just more air. And when he tried to get their attention to ask for help reaching the cereal bowls, it was met with unrecognizing gazes that quickly returned to what they were doing. He was used to being ignored, he appreciated it at times in fact, but this was getting weird. Plus, he couldn’t even see over the table as he sat down. He had to gather a bunch of heavy books, which he dragged across the floor with his feeble strength, and stack them on the seat and scramble up to sit on top of them.
“Dad, can you pass the milk, p-please?” he didn’t like how high-pitched and soft his voice was, it didn’t normally sound like that he was almost certain. His father, who was over twice his height, and several times his breadth, with deep, burgundy fur and a bushy beard, acted like he hadn’t heard Roger’s voice. And with how quiet he sounded, that very well may have been the case. Roger stood up in his chair and asked again, trying to attract his father’s attention with waving his paws. Finally, the older fox glanced up from his newspaper and his eyes slid lazily over to his first-born son. He blinked, like he didn’t know who he was looking at. Roger sought even a speck of recognition in his dad’s eyes, but it was like he was nothing more than a lamp, or a mildly interesting painting. Usually, he’d be talked down to and over like he wasn’t there, but this lack of acknowledgment was depersonalizing, it hurt. He couldn’t think what he could have done to earn this kind of treatment from his father.
Nate, who seemed at least to have noticed that he was a living being, pushed the milk over towards Roger without so much as a word. The older, but smaller fox tried to lift the milk jug, but it felt like it weighed a hundred tons. He barely managed to nudge it, his arms trembling. Finally, he almost tipped it over, which would have made a massive, clumsy, perfectly in-character mess, but it was caught by Nate’s steady hand. With a barely perceptible little smirk, Nate picked up the jug with ease and poured milk into his brother’s bowl for him.
“Th-thank you…” Roger mumbled. Again, no acknowledgment. It was like he didn’t even exist to them. They carried on a normal conversation with each other without even mentioning Roger, talking about school and chores. Roger usually didn’t get tasked with much, his legendary clumsiness more a recipe for bigger messes than a tidy house, but he usually at least got a token chore, something even he couldn’t mess up too badly, like taking out the trash or folding laundry. This weekend however he got zero assignments; normally this would be a cause for celebration for a kid, but it made Roger feel empty as can be. He tried to focus on his eating his breakfast cereal to fill his body up with something at least.
However the spoon felt very heavy and awkward in Roger’s little paws; usually he could at least handle silverware, this was getting out of hand! He had to chew extra hard too, the cereal flakes worrisomely huge and filling his mouth. He almost choked once or twice, which didn’t even earn him a cursory glance from his father or brother. If he were a more outgoing personality, he may have felt like screaming at them to notice him, like standing on the table and making a scene, but Roger was not that type of fox.
Standing up, feeling like he’d only gotten lighter after eating, Roger gulped in dire dread as he felt his colorful, rocket-patterned kiddie briefs, which were for toddlers and had been mostly tight when he put them on a mere hour ago, starting to slide down his stick-thin, bony behind. Roger gripped onto the waistband through his gown-like shirt and scampered towards the stairs as fast as he could, tripping all the way.
Something was seriously wrong, he knew it. Rubbing his nose after falling on it every other step, struggling to lift his legs high enough to even scale them one at a time, he returned to his room. He felt like he wanted to cry, but no tears would even come, a little whine was all that escaped him as he pushed the door shut and sank to the floor in his swallowing garments. His life had been normal before he woke up, it hadn’t been a good life, but he was going to make something of himself someday, he was sure of that, but now it was feeling like he was being forgotten. Forgotten by his father and brother, forgotten by everyone, by the world! Slowly, he stood up and went to the floor-length mirror he had in his closet; he stepped on his tail once and fell forward, but got back up. He gasped at what he saw.
Staring back at him in his reflection was an extremely inconsequential fox, witheringly thin, with limbs like whisps. He definitely didn’t look that tenuous and tiny yesterday. His long hair was like a bundle of pinkish-red hay on the end of a pitchfork, he looked like a scarecrow. A miniature scarecrow. He had to have lost a full foot and change of height, which was a considerable percentage since he barely had a handful of feet to start with. As he stared, his shirt and underwear slid right off him, puddling on the floor and leaving him nude. He yelped in a faint, thin voice, staring at what he’d been reduced to.
His frame was like a stick figure, so it wasn’t surprising the heavy, overlarge kid-sized clothing had fallen off, but it almost seemed like it slipped right through the matter of his body. He was becoming so thin and immaterial that things were phasing right through him. He stared some more; his fur had a weird look to it, fluttery and silky, lighter in color too, his red fur fading to salmon. Feeling his face and chest, it was almost like touching water, it was so smooth and soft. If he pushed too hard, he felt like he might just push right through himself to the other side.
His features were weirdly smoothed over too, simplified like a cartoon character’s. It was fitting, as he was almost so thin as to be flat as a two-dimensional drawing. Roger’s mind was trying to race, but it kept stumbling over itself too, like his feet would do normally. He wanted to be scared and upset by this, but it was hard to remember exactly what was wrong, hard to keep it in his mind. Even his thoughts were phasing through his head like his brain was translucent.
His name… was Roger, he tried to hold onto that, but lost it. He swayed and shrank away further in his reflection, no more than a foot tall now; he could see the wall of his bedroom through his chest, like he was a tiny, thin ghost, but somehow even less than that. A vague sense of doom was suffusing his mind now. Something was wrong, he was… real, right? He didn’t seem to have enough substance to be quite real though. Maybe he was someone’s imaginary friend? That seemed right, but no… he wasn’t quite enough to be that either soon. His face was blurred, he had no nose, no ears, barely dots for eyes and a curved line for a mouth.
The room around him was swimming, stuff was vanishing before his eyes, his bedsheets, his clothes- any evidence of him having existed was wiped clean and removed, like a timelapse going in reverse. It wasn’t long before room looked empty and new, like a guest room. Roger, whoever that was, felt a sense of loss, but only barely.
“Bye… bye…” the faint words came from almost nowhere, it would be easy to write them off as a puff of wind. All that was left of what had been a pathetic, unlucky fox was no more than a few strands of see-through almost-nothing. The least, frailest little bit of Roger clung onto existence there, sad and desperate. It wanted to exist, that was all it knew, maybe, if it held on long enough, it could gather enough to regain corporeal form, maybe in a couple hundred years…
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A loud noise rent the air just then and the door swung open again. The bigger fox, Nate pushed a vacuum into the room, thrusting it forward with confident strength. Dust and particles from the unused room were suctioned up, and the last remaining remnants, the negligible, vaporous elements of what had once been his older brother disappeared, sucked up like smoke.
A strange shadow of sadness passed over Nate’s face for a moment, but a second later he just shrugged and continued with his chores. If only he had a brother to take some of the pressure off, he had to do everything around here.
Being an only child was no fun.
Nate scratched at his elbow; something was nagging him, getting under his skin, like a rash. He hated that he got them from time to time, and that he was such a late bloomer. He tugged up his shorts and grunted with the effort of pushing the vacuum some more. He’d have to try a bath later on. His dad had picked up some special ointment/bubble bath, he just hoped he wouldn’t make a mess and spill it everywhere.
He was always doing things like that; he was so clumsy.
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