"In your sleep you've been talkin' / Callin' every other name but mine / And thats not a very encouraging sign…"
From: "Who Gets Your Love?" (dennis lambert / brian potter); Dusty Springfield, Cameo, 1973.
Katrina Hortensia dropped the bleached frog skin into her cauldron and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly 13 minutes past 13 O'clock and her lover still hadn't called. "Horner - where are you?" she sighed to herself crossly. "I applied expensive makeup on my nose wart for you and you can't even do me the courtesy of showing up…"
Katrina was feeling sorry for herself. There was a misnomer that witches were cold and heartless and couldn't feel love. Katrina knew that this was nonsense. She was cold and heartless, sure enough - but she did feel love and she did feel hurt. Katrina was new to Dusty Acres - it was a regenerated gothic community about 20 miles from Spectrum City and a world away from her dingy cob-webbed cave back in Sutton Park. Her new pad came with an inbuilt cauldron. It even had a microwave. And a toilet. That flushed.
To be honest, she really wasn't used to such luxuries…
Usually Katrina just did a spell and things would sort themselves out!!
Today she was about to do another spell…
This one was for Horner, her lover - the amphibian ratbag…
**
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
Horner sat in his room, staring at a photo album which was intricately decorated with the baby teeth of rogue porcupine. He could barely make out each picture as the light from the bedside candle didn't give out a lot of illumination.
He was changing.
But this time he knew it was different.
He daren't show his face…
For a good nine months of the years; journalist and travel writer - Horner was an oily red-skinned amphibian; a man-sized frog to put it bluntly. He was used to the jibes - but that was him - he couldn't deny it - he WAS a man-sized frog. End of story.
To be honest, he rather liked the look - it was quite stylish and in his own community he was considered quite a hottie…
…For a man-sized frog.
The other three months of the year things were different. When Horner's "skin-time" arrived he shed his scales and underneath…
Well, underneath was what the straight, hunan world would have described as a "hunk"; a strapping six foot-something dark-haired adonis.
It was a source of great misery to him. How he hated it when "skin-time" came. How he hated his muscled body, his taunt hairy torso; those dimples and cute bum. Ikkkkk!!!! It couldn't be helped, of course and he'd been with his lover, Katrina, now for several centuries and she was used to him changing.
Only…
Only, this time he sense that it was going to be different this "skin-time"…
"Please don't make it happen…" he begged in a whispered prayer to whatever force of nature it was that caused him to change. He didn't dare to look in the mirror as his scales began to flake away. "Please don't make it happen to me!!" he persisted. "Please…"
**
Meanwhile, back in her sleek new apartment Katrina had made a decision over her future and had decided that Horner was no longer part of it. She just didn't trust him, although she knew at the back of her mind that a lot of her suspicion came from her own home grown paranoia. There was always some passing mermaid or werelady whom she fancied she saw Horner winking at down at the supermarket. She even suspected him of eyeing up her next door neighbour; a wizard named Sandy - but then again she wouldn't have been averse to a three way playtime with Sandy herself; if only he didn't regard her tangled cob-webbed hair and her warty nose with total disgust.
Sandy was into centaurs anyway; so there was no chance of a witch like Katrina competing for his attentions.
At any rate, she only had one thing on her mind at the moment and that was getting back at Horner. She knew he was coming up to another "skin-time", but that didn't stop her plotting. In fact it only gave her more excuse to reek her revenge when he entered her period of skin change and scale shedding. Not only did he become handsome in a way that only a human could appreciate, but all his anger, evil and spitefulness was replaced with kindness, generosity and freedom of spirit.
It was appalling.
All that NICENESS!!!!
It made her sick.
"This is for standing me up, Horner…" she growled - taking his photo from her fur-lined, spike enhanced purse and laid it before her on the table. "This is for all those disgusting bouquets and romantic candle-lit dinners you've made me endure over the years when you've been in "skin-time…" she continued, taking a huge sacrificial dagger from her stocking top and slicking through the photo again and again until it was in many, many pieces. Collecting up the remains up together she began to chant and carried the sliced photograph towards a blazing green flame by the pentagra, nearest the phone. "This'll teach you to be so NICE to me…" she sneered and then she added. "This'll teach you once and for all…"
…And with that she threw the pieces of the photo into the fire…
**
Back across town, Horner sighed and let the door of his flat slam behind him. His scales were flaking at an alarming speed and he was leaving a little red, fleshy trail behind him. Perversely, although he was changing he was actually feeling more generous; more guilty about the whole situation - this was a side effect of the "skin-time", of course - but he needed to speak to Katrina and explain before it was too late - before the change was done.
He thought back to the period when he and Katrina had split up and he'd gone out with a human for a year or so. Her name had been Tula and she'd been a college arcivist with an understanding for supernatural matters. Things just hadn’t worked out because he'd ended up resenting the fact that Tula accepted him so readily. He'd been going through a stage quite the reverse of the way he felt now - where he just wanted to merge into the background and he hadn't wanted to face how odd he was. He'd tried living with Tula in London - but it just hadn't worked - the fact that she accepted him as an amphibian man only freaked him out even more.
Communication and understanding was the problem and it was the same with Katrina since they'd gotten back together.
"Are we back together because we're right together or because there's no-one else who understands us!?" he often pondered.
He really wasn't sure of the answer to that one…
All the same, it did not good just skulking in the shadows of his home in the aquarium and not facing Katrina. He did love her really - even though she did have a tendancy to occasionally transform him into a dust-mite occasionally when she was practising her spells. Time was running out and soon he would have to leave the aquarium and go and rent a flat or maybe move in with Katrina whilst he was in his human stage…
But this depended on one key fact: the possibility that they could get through the next "skin-time" without splitting up - because this one was going to be a biggy…
He wasn't sure if they could, to be honest…
Horner bundled the rain mac tighter around him and tried to turn his face away from any people he passed. He tried to disguise his shedding features by covering his face with a newspaper. "I should have got a taxi…" he reasoned.
He was currently running for the bus; but realised now that people would just stare if he got close to him - even more so on a bus than in a taxi.
"I'll just walk…" he decided - although it was miles across Dusty Acres to reach Katrina's flat.
He was feeling too hot too. Not just a nervous flush, but boiling - almost feverish. Worse even. Almost on fire.
As he headed across a deserted recreation ground he shrugged off his coat - forgetting about not being seen; now simply desperate to get some air.
He was still burning. Almost aflame.
It was just at this moment - as he thought he caught the sound of Katrina's laughter in the air, that something very odd did indeed happen...
Above him a large bird swooped - one of the area's native Tyrannopigeons.
Horner stopped. Something was wrong.
A giant shadow appeared to surround him and appeared to be getting bigger.
Bigger.
BIGGER.
Something was falling towards him from a great height. Horner looked up quickly to see what it was. He was soon enough to see it, but not soon enough to run.
Seconds later a giant Tyrannopigeon egg, the size of a small house, plummetted out of the sky and landed on Horner's head.
Everything went dark.
Will Katrina's curse kill Horner? Can the metamorphosizing amphibian escape the weight of the giant Tyrannopigeon egg? Is there any way that Horner's scales could be recycled so that they don't go to waste; used as ear-rings for instance? Could Katrina forgive Horner his generous ways? Should he survive, what will he become this time and if it's hunky then I'm first in line for a snog, so hands off…
All will be revealed in the next scintilating episode of DUSTY ACRES - an everyday story of the sort of folk you simply don't meet everyday!!!
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