Rufus and the Troubled Things

Rufus was nine, and already a Furry.
He told this to everyone, even the school receptionist who just wanted to know why he’d been suspended again.

“A Fox,” he’d say, tapping the paper fox ears stitched to his hood.
She’d blink.
He’d blink back, longer.
Then she’d sigh and print another letter for his mother.

He wore the fox suit everywhere.
Woolies, playground, church (where the minister pretended not to notice).

The suit smelled faintly of Milo dust, creek water, and something like trouble.
One sticky Brisbane evening he pushed too far.
He drew a moustache on the fridge.
He declared himself Fanglord and yelled through his teeth,
“I’LL EAT THE WHOLE WORLD IF I WANT.”

His mother turned off the stove without looking at him.
“Mate,” she said.
“Bed.
No dinner.
I am not wrestling with fox-logic tonight.”

Rufus stormed to his room, his little Furry-heart thundering.
He slammed the door so hard Jesus probably winced from the church across the road.

The room trembled.
A leaf fell from nowhere.
Something creaked in the plaster like a giant stretching.

And then he saw the cat.
Thin, white, bored.
A face carved by a lazy god with the wrong end of a pencil.

“You’re a wild thing,” Rufus told it.
“All places are the same to me,” said the cat, like it was tired of repeating this across centuries.
Rufus swallowed.
“You talked.”

“You listen,” said the cat.
“Talking is nothing.
Listening is expensive.”

The room kept changing.
The carpet softened into soil.
The fan slowed into a warm breeze.
The walls sighed and sprouted bark.

Rufus blinked.
The fox suit blinked with him.

“You’re doing magic,” he whispered.
“No,” said the cat.
“You’re hungry.
Hunger makes doors in strange places.”

The floor rolled.
A dinghy sloshed against the new shore of his bed frame.
“Get in,” the cat said.
“Before doubt ruins the whole show.”

They sailed through a flooded version of his street.
Wheelie bins bobbed like bored crocodiles.
Someone’s trampoline drifted past like a tired moon.
Rufus held the boat’s edges and tried to look ferocious, but fox suits absorb fear like sponges.

“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To the troubled things,” the cat said.
“And, regrettably, their opinions.”

The island rose from the water, big and loamy and pulsing with neon.
The troubled things were waiting.
One wore a rusted shopping trolley for ribs.
One had possum paws and an iPad for a face, frozen forever on 999+ notifications.
A huge one had a fridge for a belly, the drawn-on moustache that would not wipe off.

They roared ghastly roars,
scrolled ghastly news feeds,
and opened ghastly notifications.

Rufus stood in the dinghy, fox ears trembling.
He stared at them without blinking, the ancient Furry-stare he’d been practising in reflections of bus windows.

One by one, the troubled things wilted under it.

“He’s the most troubled of us all,” they muttered.
“Regent Furry!”
“All hail the Fox Emperor!”
“Someone find him a throne!
Or a beanbag!”

“You can start the rumpus now,” they said.
So he did.
He howled at the magpies.
He danced on the roofs of the drowned cars.
He whirled and stomped and thundered until the night itself started to reconsider its job.

The cat watched from a fence, tail twitching like an metronome that remembered jazz.

But even a Furry gets tired.
And when the wild things fell quiet, Rufus felt the emptiness again.
Like someone had opened a door in his chest.

“I want to go home,” he said.

The troubled things cracked open, soft at the centres.
“Stay,” they begged, claws clicking like loose coat hangers.
“We will sacrifice you.
We love you so.”

“No,” Rufus said.
The fox suit stiffened like a small proud mountain.

The dinghy appeared.
The cat was already inside, licking a paw like boredom was a religion.

“You do not have to go back,” the cat said.
“You could make your own cave.
Furies do that.”
“Furries,” Rufus said.
“Same problem,” said the cat.

“She made spaghetti,” Rufus said. He paused.
“She always makes spaghetti when she’s sad.”

“That,” said the cat, “is extremely inconvenient of her.”

But he climbed into the boat anyway.

They drifted backwards through the half-flooded world.
They passed bus stops full of lonely kids, the blinking Woolies sign, the whole wet Brisbane night.

His room reassembled itself.
The carpet re-solidified.
The plaster stopped breathing.
The fan resumed its lopsided complaining.

On his desk: a bowl of spaghetti with cling wrap over it.
Still warm.

A note in his mother’s handwriting:
EAT THIS PLEASE.
WE’LL TALK TOMORROW.
LOVE, MUM.

Rufus ate it too fast and burned his mouth.
His fox hood was pushed back.
His heartbeat quieter now.

The cat appeared in the window.

“You,” Rufus said with sauce on his chin, “walk by yourself.”

“Always,” said the cat.
“All places are alike to me.
It is my curse and my holiday.”

Rufus scratched behind its ear.
The cat leaned in, barely.

“You’re not alone,” Rufus said.

“That’s your problem,” the cat replied.
“Not mine.”

Then it hopped onto the roof, tail cutting a small, neat question mark into the night sky.

Rufus curled into bed in the fox suit, which kept its own secrets close.
He was a Furry, sure.
But maybe even Furies needed caves.
And mothers.
And bowls of spaghetti that stayed warm
even when you did not deserve them.

Outside, the restless things rumoured in the dark.
On the roof, the cat padded, light as a sigh between stories.

F.S.F.