FamiliarCo
Harry stood in front of the doors to his local pet shop, but he couldn’t seem to make himself go any further. His legs felt like they were made of lead. He glanced down at his feet, just to make sure that someone hadn’t actually turned his legs to lead. To his relief and disappointment, they had not. Why was he scared of a pet shop?
Come on, he thought, What gives?
The facade of the store was normal, save for the key card reader that had appeared on the wall, next to the automatic glass doors. Harry knew that none of the people coming and going by him could see it. It was black, and emblazoned with the red symbol of a closed eye. He took the matching key card that his uncle Hargrove had given him out of his pocket, and turned it over in his hands.
Following his introduction to demiplanar shops, Harry had been to restaurants where the food served itself, perused carnivorous bookstores, and gone to a chiropractor who cleared a block in his mystic arcanum, just below his spine. The pet shop, he reasoned to himself, couldn’t be much weirder than anything else he had seen that week. Besides, he had always liked animals.
He slid the card into the reader, and heard a click. A small screen on the black box suddenly lit with a flash. Letters began to scroll across the screen, almost faster than Harry could read them.
PLEASE MIND THE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
The edges of the door began to blur and twist in Harry’s vision, and then the distortion spread to the walls, the window displays, even the sidewalk seemed to shift under his feet. It was like someone had gripped that little pocket of reality and shaken it out, leaving the whole storefront gripped with a profound sense of dizziness. As the fabric of reality turned, Harry could see shafts of color tracing the facade of the building, ever shifting and swirling in a nauseating prismatic show. He held his gaze to the key card reader. It was the only thing that didn’t change.
After what seemed like an eternity, there was a sudden pop. Letters scrolled across the screen once again.
PLEASE REMOVE KEYCARD
Harry did so, and saw that the red eye on his card had opened. He shoved it back in his pocket.
WELCOME TO FAMILIARCO, MYSTIC
“Brilliant name.” Harry muttered.
Looking around after the transformation, FamiliarCo didn’t differ too much from the pet shop he knew, if a little dirtier. The storefront sign even had the same font. The logo caught his eye. Two snakes, eating each other’s tails. In front of him, the automatic glass doors slid open. With a deep breath, Harry finally stepped inside.
He was instantly hit with the stench of many different animals, crowded together in places that they shouldn’t be. The walls were stacked high with cages, and the stone brick floors were littered with hay and feathers. The aisles were labeled with the crude likenesses of animals, which were drawn on chalkboards that hung from the ceiling. He spotted a gangly cashier, only one in a row of empty cashier stations. A sign above them advertised: #6.
“Ah, a customer.” The cashier said. “Welcome to FamiliarCo.”
Harry was about to respond, when he felt something rub against his leg, and lurched away from it with a yelp.
“What the-!”
But it was only a cat. A beautiful, dirty white longhair at that. It stared at him with inquisitive yellow eyes, and rubbed its body against his leg again. Harry pet it with one shaking hand. I’ve always liked animals… right?
“Did Pebbles scare ya?” A gravelly voice called from down one of the aisles, making Harry nearly jump out of his skin again. It belonged to a grizzled looking old man, who hobbled out from what looked like a picture of a dog-pig hybrid, and gave him a wide grin.
“Jumpy, are ya?” The old man asked again. Harry got caught between nodding and shaking his head, and kind of moved it in a circle.
“We get that a lot here.” The old man assured him. “My name’s Rocky, and that vagrant over there is Pebbles.”
“H-Harry.”
“I know the name of all the cats in this here store.” Rocky sighed, and leaned on his twisted cane. “Don’t you go takin’ them away from me.”
“Oh, I wasn’t planning on it. I was actually here for an owl…?”
Rocky’s voice dropped a pitch. “I mean it.”
“Oh…kay.” Harry looked around, and saw a surprising lack of owls, or other employees. “Hey, where is everybody?”
“Oh, you mean Tomato, and Chicken, and Pepper?” Rocky gestured down the aisle. Harry looked, and dozens of glowing, almost hungry eyes stared back at him.
“Those are animals.”
“Oh, man, beast. What difference?! The great superiority complex of humans plagues you still, boy.” Rocky jammed a finger into Harry’s chest. “You’d do well to be careful with your ignorance!”
“I-I’m sorry sir. I just want an owl.”
Rocky lowered his head to the ground, for so long that Harry thought he had gone into some kind of trance. “Let…me…” He murmured. His face suddenly shot back up, with that same grin he had on before.
“Let me just put it to you this way, kid. We take care of the animals here, so they don’t take care of us!” With that, the old man away. Harry gulped back a lump in his throat, and ran after him.
Harry walked past cages filled with all sorts of exotic creatures. It was all mammals at first, pigs and goats and a sacrificial lamb or two. He even saw a rat king, counting at least twenty writhing tails tied together in a brutal knot.
Harry realized that he didn’t know where the corridor ended. He couldn’t see past the walls of enclosures, which twisted and turned, splitting into forks every now and again like some living maze.
How many animals can there be?
At one point, he stepped over a magic circle, and felt goosebumps crawl up his arms as the temperature suddenly dropped. He must have reached the reptile section. Slithering, wriggling, scraping sounds of claws and scales on metal engulfed him as he ventured further. Harry crossed his arms and tried to catch up to Rocky, who he could barely see anymore. Just get the owl and go, Harry, just get it and go.
“Pst.”
Harry stopped in his tracks. That was strange. He could have sworn he heard someone’s voice. But he couldn’t pinpoint an origin. Almost as if the voice was coming from inside his own mind.
“PSSST.”
His gaze stopped on an orange lizard with beady black eyes. The lizard stared at him incredulously, and then gave its head a sharp tilt to the right.
“Over here.”
To the right, there was a sleek, jet black snake curled around a rock. Wings jutted out of its body, but lay still on the ground. Its tongue flitted in and out of its mouth.
“About time you noticed me. I need to ask you a favor, boy.”
Harry felt his jaw drop open embarrassingly. “Did you just talk?”
“Not so loud! You need only think what you want to say to me, and I will hear it.”
“Sorry.” Harry shook his head, and knelt down by the snake’s enclosure.“I didn’t know that I could talk to snakes…”
“Who’s talking to who here, buddy?” The snake looked exasperated. “I swear, you so much as say ‘hi’ to a human and they start thinking they’re a hotshot. Next you’re gonna be thinking you’re the chosen one or some crap…”
“Oh.”
“Sorry to crush your dreams, kid. Let’s stick to business. I want your keycard.”
“What?! I’m not giving you my keycard!” Harry instinctually reached down to check that his keycard was still in his pocket, and realized too late that he was just revealing its position to the snake. Lightning fast, a tongue flew by his hand and stuck to the keycard with a squelch. He watched in horror as it flew out of his pocket and into the cage of a giant frog with human teeth. The card was then passed through the bars of the frog to the orange lizard, back to the snake.
“Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, another favor?”
“Give it back!”
“I will if you open the door to my cage…”
Harry groaned miserably. In doing so, he remembered that he had a voice. “Hang on a second! There’s nothing stopping me from calling Rocky on this whole situation, right now! He could get my keycard back!” He cupped his hands around his mouth, preparing to shout. “I’ll do it! OH ROCK-”
“NOT SO LOUD!” The snake slid up it’s rock towards Harry, stopping just inches away from his face. “We’re on thin enough ice as it is. If the other humans catch wind of what we’re planning, the whole mission’s as good as dead. DEAD!” The whole reptile aisle had gone silent.
“What mission?”
“Freedom. Or revenge, most likely. Tell me, boy, have you ever wanted something so badly that you can taste it? The blood, on the tip of your tongue?” The snake’s tongue flitted in and out again.
“Honestly, I just want an owl.”
“They’re kept in the rafters. Let me out, and I’ll get you your owl.”
That was enough. As Harry began disenchant the lock, the snake spoke again. “One more thing, Harry.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You talk to yourself in the third person a lot. Harry, be prepared for a reckoning.”
With a small click, he opened the latch to the cage. The snake practically shot out of its enclosure, and with a few hard beats of its leathery wings, it was off. Harry watched it dance like a ribbon towards the ceiling, his keycard in its mouth.
“I will remember this…” It’s voice was nearly a whisper now, getting smaller and smaller as it rose above him.
“Wait!” Harry called, “I never learned your name!”
“It’s Noodle…”
When he could no longer see Noodle, Harry lept from the ground and took off running. He had no idea where he was going, if he was being honest with himself, but figured that he could run into something. And sure enough, after a few twists and turns, Harry nearly ran headlong into Rocky. He was talking to a younger guy with long slicked back hair and sunglasses. The guy was holding a folding ladder in one hand and a rusty key in the other.
“There he is!” Rocky exclaimed. “I was just telling Karl here all about you! He’s going to get you that owl!”
Harry thought back to Noodle, and the reckoning he was supposed to be preparing for. A pit of dread opened in his stomach.
“Oh, there’s really no need to do that! See, I changed my mind…”
“Just let me do my job, man.” Karl set the ladder down right below a large trapdoor, embedded in the ceiling. It was engraved with a magic circle, just like the one Harry had seen in the reptile section. He muttered something under his breath, and the ladder stretched to close the distance.
“Wait, no…” Harry protested pathetically, but it was too late. Karl was already halfway up the ladder.
“Look at him go!” Rocky’s voice swelled with pride. “Karl’s always been so eager to meet his fate.”
“What? Oh…what’s the use?” The trapdoor swung closed, Rocky hobbled off. Harry waited. Five minutes, ten minutes. Nothing happened. He couldn’t even hear anyone up there in the ceiling, let alone see any kind of change. Fifteen minutes. Harry had stopped noticing the stench of animal feces in the air, which he took as a horrible sign: he was getting used to it.
That must be how anyone is able to work in a place like this.
Everything is so wrong here.
Then, a realization hit Harry.
Karl wouldn’t know something was wrong if it were right in front of him.
Oh god. I’ve sentenced him to death.
With a start, Harry rushed back the way he came, towards the cashier’s stations. He ran in circles, for what felt like forever, through the living maze of cages, his heart pounding in his ears. Finally, he broke through and stumbled to the cashier’s station, to the single, cashier who had greeted him.
Cats jumped up and pranced about their station, stepping on random keys. For a moment they just stared at the register, glassy eyes, before noticing Harry, gasping for air in front of them.
“It’s you again…How can you help me-I mean, how can I help you today?”
Harry considered explaining everything that had happened, but found he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it yet. Instead, he said,
“Karl’s in the ceiling.”
“Damn it Karl…”
“He’s been up there for fifteen minutes.”
The cashier rolled their eyes. “I appreciate your concern, but Karl should be fine. As long as the magic circles are intact.”
“What do the magic circles do?”
“A lot of things. We don’t need many down here, because the animals don’t pose as much of a threat, but the ceiling is a whole different story. Thats the aviary.” Harry gulped. “And that includes beasts like griffons and hippogryphs! You don’t want those things to get out…” The cashier grimaced. “We’ve got circles to keep the cages closed, a circle to keep the ceiling from collapsing under all the weight, and what else…oh yeah! A silencing circle, to keep the noise down. Wait, why am I telling you any of this?”
The pit of dread grew in Harry’s stomach. “Can anyone…deactivate the magic circles?”
“Only the employees, with their keycards.”
Right then, there came a sharp sudden creeeeeak.
“Damn it, Karl.” The cashier said again.
First came a steady hum, then a warbling. What could have been hundreds of beasts, holding their breath.
Then the ceiling broke open.
And the cacophony began. Screeches, piercing birdcall war cries pierced Harry’s ears. The air became the fluttering of a thousand furious wings, and the scraping of beaks, as everything that was kept in the ceiling came down in an explosion of feathers. He couldn’t tell how many there were, he barely even saw the black snake that flew from the explosion, and released his keycard into the free for all. Harry scrambled to catch it, and felt himself catch the talons of some massive beast. He saw Karl, falling from the ceiling in a heap.
Was this meant to be his fate?
His fingers closed around the card, and relief flooded his brain. As the ceiling beams began to collapse, Harry fell out of the sliding doors of FamiliarCo, or at least what was left of it. Above him, flew out a single white owl.
